"You put all participants in the same list regardless how long they operated?" The journalistic colleague was more than surprised to learn about our score lists when he questioned me about my strange hobby. To my weak reply that the basic distances of contests are mainly 24 or 48 hours he made the point: "How many can go this full distance?" I didn´t know but felt the same uneasiness that our score lists may possibly be merely a function of invested operation time than of skill and equipment. Since then I tried to get some information about real operation time of real hams. A few findings are here and hopefully more to come:
The best source are the statistics of the Russian DX-Contest (20052006 - link now updated to the results for Non-UA-stations) who publishes the individual operation time of each participant even band by band. I counted through the times for 745 and 936 Non-UA Single Ops in the Allband Categories (single band gives time restrictions by condx, but I´m interested in the invested Op-Time when there is no other limit than individual will and possibility). So here we go:
From left to right the operation periods 23-24 hours, 22-23 hours and so on with their percentage of logsending participants:
6,6 percent operated more than 23 hours in this 24 hour contest with an everybody can work everybody format.
About two thirds operated 12 hours halftime or shorter.
The average operation time was 10,8 hours (2005) and 9,8 hours (2006) with 2006 having slightly worse condx.
RDXC 2007
For 984 of 1006 Allband-entries of non-UA-stations were operation times available at the claimed scores site.
The average operation time was 9,7 hours. Again two thirds (66,9%) operated 12 hours halftime or less. 6,4 percent operated between 23 and 24 hours fulltime. The hourwise distribution can be seen in this picture:
Grouped into 4-hour-segments activity over the last three years was such:
Op-time
2007
2006
2005
20-24 h
11,3 %
11,3 %
13,7 %
16-20 h
9,8 %
8,3 %
9,9 %
12-16 h
11,8 %
13,5 %
14,1 %
8-12 h
16,2 %
18,8 %
22,4 %
4- 8 h
25,8 %
25,3 %
22,1 %
0- 4 h
24,9 %
22,8 %
17,7 %
WWDX SSB 2006
Thanks to the open logs for this contest and a software from Michael, DL6MHW (tnx!), the operation time for this big contest could be calculated. Some results from 2486 computed single-operator-allband entries:
The average operation time among those stations was 11,3 hours.
I found 35 stations operating longer than 40 hours representing 1,4% of log submitting SOAB. 130 stations (5,2%) operated longer than 30 hours
90,47 percent operated less than 24 hours halftime and 80,5% operated less than 18 hours.
