I’m thrilled to have made it into the international “top ten” in the single operator, all band, low power category of the CQWW CW Contest 2007. I placed tenth in the world, and second in Africa.
My congratulations to the other stations that placed in the international Top Ten (SOAB LP): V26K, HK1AR, H7/K9NW, CT6A, UA9BA, J88DR, C6AQQ, OM5XX and EA8CN.
How’s that for a post title that’s completely meaningless except to other contesters? The UBN report is produced by the contest adjudicator and lists the stations who are Unique to my log (no-one else in the contest worked them so there is some doubt as to whether my contact with them was valid), Broken callsigns (where I logged a callsign incorrectly) and Not In Log (I claimed to have worked a station, but the other station did not log me). It’s an error report on my contest log, and is used to calculate my final score, after deductions for Broken calls and not in logs (Unique calls are noted but not penalised).
My UBN for the 2007 CQWW CW shows a total score reduction of 10.7%, which is pretty bad. According to Scott Robbin’s blog, “5% is considered excellent, 6% good, 7% or lower is deficient”. Scott W4PA is a world-class contester with a string of first places in major contests, so I’ll take his word for it! However delving a bit deeper, the actual opertor error stats are 1.5% of calls copied incorrectly, 0.5% “not-in-log” and 0.4% unique calls. This compares to Scott’s 1.5% copied incorrectly, 0.2% not-in-log and 0.5% unique. The only significant difference is that I was NIL’d more often than Scott, probably indicating that he makes more effort to be 100% sure that the other station is happy with the QSO before logging it. A good lesson to learn, especially for a low power station located far away from the major ham populations in NA, Europe and Japan.
The other reason for a higher percentage score reduction is simply that I worked fewer stations than Scott (2717 good QSOs as opposed to Scott’s 5268), so my errors were more likely to lose me a country or zone multiplier – I lost 8 multipliers, while Scott lost only two. So I guess I must just try to work more stations! Note that this comparison is based on Scott’s CQWW SSB UBN, as he hasn’t posted his CW UBN yet.
The good news is that even with the score reduction, my final score still places me within the top 10 SOAB LP based on the 3830 claimed scores, so I’m holding thumbs for the final result. If you have a copy of the September 2008 CQ Magazine where the results appear then please drop me an email (andrew dot roos at mweb dot co dot za) and let me know how I did as CQ magazine is not sold in South Africa.
I support the call for open logs to deter cheating in contests, so if you would like to see my full UBN report then it is available here with user name “zs6aa” and password 509-827.
Contest: CQCW07
Call: ZS6AA
Category: Single Op All Band Low Power
************************** Summary ***************************
2775 Claimed QSO before checking (does not include duplicates)
2717 Final QSO after checking reductions
8211 Claimed QSO points
7523 Final QSO points
248 Claimed countries
241 Final countries
74 Claimed zones
73 Final zones
322 Claimed mults
314 Final mults
2643942 Claimed score
2362222 Final score
-10.7% Score reduction
47 (1.7%) duplicates
43 (1.5%) calls copied incorrectly
0 (0.0%) band change violations
15 (0.5%) not in log
11 (0.4%) calls unique to this log only (not removed)
