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How much does a QSO cost?

Frans Schwartz site manager PA6Z (pa6z) on January 8, 2006
View comments about this article!

PA6Z in the year 2005:

a summary of activities, results and costs by force of circumstances.

In 2005 our contest group has participated in four (4) contests, some were necessary, some not really, but all made us happy !

Contest

Result

Reason

Highlights

PACC

3rd place MM HP

We were good, but not that good

Destruction of our 80m vertical, destruction of our 80m amp, wind speeds up to 75 mph, 3 QSO's on 15m (eh� ?), new deep sleep record by PA0TEN, good contest!

IOTA

745k

Well, the BBQ was tempting

BBQ

CQWW SSB

4.48M

Unknown

Cleaning up the mess was our climax

CQWW CW

Did not happen

Weather

Weather

During the year, we ran 8585 QSO's, none of which were dupe, out of band, ATV, one way, QRP or imaginary , because all this is not allowed by our rules as set in the PA6Z contest handbook. Of the 8585 QSO's, 8584 were contest and one (1) was expedition, accidentally made by DL/PA2AWU while he was shopping for some cheap recycled aluminum in Germany.

For this result, we had to roll out (and roll back in) 1.9 km of coax, 2.5 km of guy wire, 3.8 km of radials and 1.5 km of beverage. We traveled a total of over 3605.1 km by car, 12.3 km by bike, 234.7 km on foot and 0.0 km by airplane or space shuttle. This excludes our monthly meetings and the regular trips to refrigerator and toilets.

In our attempts we consumed 6.3 boxes of beer, 21 bottles of wine, 38 bottles of soda, 120 cups of coffee, 12.3 kilos of food and 170 kWh of power.

We received 2 official
RFI complaints posted by PA4VHF and PA0JED (our own operators?).

The overall costs per contest QSO are listed below:

Item

Necessary amount per QSO

coax

0,22134 m

guy wire

0,29124 m

radials

0,44268 m

beverage

0,17474 m

travel

448,752 m

beer

0,00587 l

wine

0,00171 l

soda

0,00443 l

coffee

0,00280 l

food

0,00143 kg

power

0,01980 kWh

RFI complaints

2,3299e-4


Looking at this table, we can conclude that not much is needed for a contest QSO. This inspires us to proceed in the next years, and try to make our contest station even more efficient than it already is.


CU in 2006!


Member Comments: Add A Comment
How much does a QSO cost? Reply
by PA2AWU on January 8, 2006 Mail this to a friend!
Frans, PA5CA, Mailed me and informed me about this site and this article.
And indeed, I must confess that I'm always feel hunger for aluminium tubes to build higher and bigger antenna's.
If you have a similar hunger, just mail me so we can join / exchanged information about our suffering...
Hi.
Greetings from EEFDE, 20 km away from Arie uit Neede, the programmer of 4NEC2, an antenna design program that every antenna builder should / must know ! ?

CU in CQWW CW 2006.

CW is big FUN,

Designing and building antenna's TOO.

Arend PA2AWU a member of the contest group PA6Z
 
How much does a QSO cost? Reply
by VE5ZX on January 8, 2006 Mail this to a friend!
What a delightful article. Congrats on the fine effort.
 
How much does a QSO cost? Reply
by oe5oho on January 9, 2006 Mail this to a friend!
So if we know how many QSO we want to log, we can start to pile-up the money for investment into our new setup...

THANKS! :-)
 
How much does a QSO cost? Reply
by PA1AW on January 10, 2006 Mail this to a friend!
OK, at least we now can compare the West-Coast and Eastern Border figure related to the qso.
My idea is our price on the bear is slightly higher but down on a few others. Just have to wait for our treasurer to close 2005 first.
Great article.
73 Alex PA1AW, Contest Manager PI4COM
 
How much does a QSO cost? Reply
by ON5KQ on January 24, 2006 Mail this to a friend!
Conclusion:
You must have a very fast car to win a contest from the Netherlands...

See you in 2006,

Ulli, ON5KQ
 
How much does a QSO cost? Reply
by DF3KV on April 12, 2006 Mail this to a friend!
I should like to suggest that you better change the rules n your contest handbook.
You should not refuse to work dupes, that might cost you qso and penulty points and if bad luck multiplier points

good luck in the contests!

73
Peter
 
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