I think you're correct Dave. Unlike all other contests, WRTC is
refereed and everyone uses identical antennas and power ... about as
level a playing field as you could ever create. WRTC *is* structured to
focus on operator skills vs station excellence, 100W is 100W in that
situation, it doesn't really matter which rig generated the RF.
Mandating a specific radio would put all the ops who don't use that
radio in everyday contesting at a big disadvantage.
There could be some small advantages on receive, I imagine they were
confronted with pile-ups earlier in the contest, but eventually, they
likely worked everyone they heard, and I doubt there would be much
difference in what one could hear on a K3 vs a 7600, FT1000, or other
radios. They're all either current state-of-the-art radios or close.
The one factor that using different radios does not control for is
spurious emissions such as key clicks and phase noise. There *is* a
wide difference in those between the radios. Don't know if that would
turn out to be an issue in the WRTC environment, although I sure know it
was when my "neighbor" Jack, KF6T, was running a Yaesu rig with serious
phase noise problems. Of course, if clicks and phase noise was an issue
at WRTC, it would impact everyone else negatively.
73,
Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org
On 7/25/2014 3:43 PM, dave wrote:
I think that the rig is not very important. One tidbit to support this
theory, although far from conclusive, is to compare what happened to the
OE3DIA team in 2010 vs 2014.
In 2010 there was a nasty lightning storm the took out both of this
teams K3's. They were knocked out about 1 hour into the contest. But
Yaesu had some reps on site and they had a pair of FT857's which they
loaned to the team. They lost about an hour in the switchover. So they
ran for 23 hours while the other teams ran for 24.
If you compare their score at the end of the contest to the other teams
after 23 hours (the hour-by-hour scores was available on the Russian web
site for a while after the contest) they were in about the middle of the
pack. This is using K3's for 1 hour and FT857's for 22 hours.
In 2014 I see no notes about anyone suffering such a loss and the OE3DIA
team finished 22nd out of 59. Again about the middle of the pack. I
think this somewhat better than their 23 hour comparison in 2010, but
not a lot better.
This would tend to indicate that - when in the hands of very competent
operators - a pair of lowly FT857's is nearly as good as a pair of K3's.
Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying the FT857 is as good as a
K3, it is *not*. No doubt about that. In fact, it is not as good as a
K2. I have those two sitting here side by side and I can assure you that
the K2 is the superior rig. What it says to me is that the K3 and others
of its class are somewhat overkill. The lowly FT857 is 'nearly good
enough'. Certainly not great, but 'nearly good enough'.
73 de dave
ab9ca/4
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