Arizona Outlaws Contest Club

AOCC Club Ladder Competition

by Dave Gilbert AB7E

October 2009

After playing around with this thing most of the summer, I think I have
the structure for it mostly in place. It will take some time for the
various contest results to show up, though, since I'm going to go first
with K8IA's summary postings since our club was formed, and then of
course add new results as time goes by. I'm also going to try to go
back and pick up results from some of the major contests held over the
last year to help kick start the ladder, but I make no promises ... that
is pretty tedious to do since I will probably have to manually search
the published results one callsign at a time.

Warning: This announcement includes both a description of the
competition ladder AND some explanations for why it was set up this
way. Reading it in its entirety is not for the drowsy or faint hearted.

Anyway, here's how the ladders are currently set up:

A. Purpose:

1. To provide a mechanism for friendly competition between club members on an ongoing basis.
2. To provide an opportunity for individuals to track and improve their radiosport proficiency.
3. To have fun.

B. Ladder Categories

Overall
CW
SSB
Digital
Low Power
QRP
Single Band 160m
Single Band 80m
Single Band 40m
Single Band 20m
Single Band 15m
Single Band 10m
VHF/UHF (combined)
DX
Domestic
Restricted

Category Notes:

1. The power classifications will be per the particular contest. In other words, if Contest A defines Low Power as 100 watts or less and Contest B defines Low Power as 150 watts or less, both will count toward the Low Power ladder category.

2. Scores will generally apply to multiple categories. CW scores will also count toward the Overall ladder (in fact, EVERYTHING counts toward the Overall category). QRP scores will also count toward the Low Power ladder, etc. Where possible, we will try to give credit for other cross-ladder entries as well. For example, if you operate single band 40m with low power, we'll try to give you credit toward both the Single Band 40m and Low Power categories, but much of that will depend on how clearly you identify your operation when you send out your claimed score for that contest. Some contests (like CQWW) track that via their entry classes, but many others don't. In any case, it is possible for a competent and active contester to rank high in more than one category.

3. If you operate both CW and SSB in contests like ARRL 10m, IARU DX, or the various QSO parties, your score will go toward only the Overall category since there isn't any practical way to split out the modes. If you operate only CW or SSB, your scores will be credited toward that respective mode (AND, of course, the Overall ladder).

4. I was originally planning to include an All Band category, a High Power category, and a World category ... but then I realized that those scores were going to be exactly the same as the Overall category since we're not going to try to have ladders for combined criteria (such as Domestic/CW or 40m/Low Power).

5. I was also planning to set up three or four ladder categories based upon antenna descriptions, but the email response for that was pretty underwhelming and it just doesn't make sense to set up categories for so few participants. The one category that does seem to be justified is for those folks with severely limited installations ... indoor dipoles, very short verticals, wire antennas very low to the ground, ability to operate on only one or two bands, etc. I'm calling this the Restricted category and the criteria are going to be rather arbitrary, but let's just say that full-size verticals and/or dipoles approaching 1/2 wavelength in the air probably won't qualify. Trust me ... some folks are stuck with much less than that.

C. Scoring Mechanism

The scoring system will be similar to that used to determine qualifiers for the 2010 WRTC event in Russia. Every contest applicable to the AOCC Competition Ladder will be assigned a point value by the AOCC Board of Directors based upon the contest's historical participation level, perceived prestige, and general visibility within the contesting community. The premier contests (CQWW, ARRL DX, CQWPX, SS) will be worth 1,000 ladder points, decreasing to around 100 points for some of the lesser domestic QSO Parties. Adjustments for particular contests may be necessary as we get more experience with this, but we needed a place to start.

Claimed scores for each contest will be used for better timeliness since nobody wants to wait 10 or 12 months to see the effect of their effort show up in the ladder rankings. This is a hobby, folks, and nobody gains by making false claims. Besides, spot checking is easy to do. One other point ... to have your score contribute to your ladder ranking you need to officially submit a log for that contest to the contest sponsor. Nobody gets credit for sitting on the sidelines. Your entry needs to show the AOCC as your club affiliation, with the following considerations:

1. If you operate outside the “club circle” for that particular contest, your scores aren’t eligible for the club score and you can assign your points to another eligible club while still having them count toward your AOCC Ladder ranking.

2. If you participate in a DXpedition or other multi-op effort where you don’t have the voting right to assign your share to the AOCC, your normal prorated share of that operation’s score will still count toward your AOCC Ladder ranking.

3. If you are the station owner of a multi-op contest entry, or are otherwise in a position to determine which clubs receive the scores of a multi-op contest entry, your ladder points will be based upon the point score that is actually assigned to the AOCC.

The ladder points for any particular contest will be prorated to each participant based upon the top club member score. For example, if K7ABC scores 2,000,000 points in CQWW DX CW (a contest worth 1,000 ladder points) and W7XYZ scores 1,200,000 points, K7ABC will get credit for 1,000 ladder points and W7XYZ will get credit for 600 ladder points. It doesn't matter which operating category any club member participates in ... everyone gets compared to the top score. If I operated that same contest and scored 150,000 points operating 80m low power, I'm only going to receive 75 ladder points toward the Single Band 80m and Low Power categories. It is being done this way for several reasons:

1. It simply isn't possible to manage multiple reference points that cover all possibilities. In the example of my hypothetical entry above, should my score be prorated against the top 80m score? The top Low Power score? Some combination of the two? The possibilities are almost endless.

2. Given the wide variety of ladder categories we plan to track and the probable participation level for some of the mid-tier and lower-tier contests, it is quite possible that almost everyone would simply get maximum ladder points for that contest.

3. Even if (in the example above) my 80m low power score is prorated against somebody who achieved a huge score running all band high power, anyone else operating either Single Band 80m or Low Power would be as well. At least for that particular contest, everyone is on equal footing for any particular ladder category (subject, of course, to the limitation, that we're not going to track two levels of category ... i.e. the combination of 80m and low power).

4. We all know that it is often not possible to put in a full time effort in any particular contest, and not all of us have high power multi-band stations, but it is worth keeping in mind your potential contribution to the club score when deciding on an entry category. The ladder point system reflects that consideration ... it simply encourages a greater contribution to the club score.

D. Multi-Op Entries

This was a tough one. The AOCC Competition Ladder is intended to be a ranking for individuals, yet many club members from time to time are likely to participate in multi-op efforts, and in fact we want to encourage that sort of thing so that members with limited stations have the opportunity to operate from better-equipped stations if they so desire. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out an equitable way to allocate those multi-op scores to the individual operators, but I couldn't come up with anything that made sense. The WRTC gives each participating operator credit for 90% of the total multi-op score, but using that across the board here would be pretty arbitrary since contests with a significant focus on multipliers probably benefit more from multiple operators than contests where multipliers don't exist or aren't as important. I also tried to find some statistical comparison between the top ten single-op and multi-op scores from some past major DX contests and there simply isn't any consistent ratio ... not even close.

Since the club really wants to encourage better-equipped stations to make themselves available to members with restricted capabilities, it didn't seem right to penalize anyone willing to do that, especially since it could be argued that many of those multi-op efforts might actually be disadvantaged by the less experienced operators they include. In the end we decided it would best to simply give everyone who participates in a multi-op effort full individual credit for whatever portion of the multi-op score is assigned to the AOCC club score. If this ends up being a problem we'll revisit it later.

E. Contests

We've made an effort to include as many contests as possible covering a very wide range of club member interests, as you should be able to observe from the many ladder categories. The spreadsheet that calculates all of this will hold as many as 100 contests and we already have about 60 of those identified, but we're going to have to need some minimum participation level in any particular contest for it to be counted ... otherwise it really isn't a competition. Right now we're using a minimum of five participating members as a cutoff. If you want your favorite contest to count, put on your marketing hat and help drum up some enthusiasm for it ahead of time.

I'll send out a separate list of contests and their currently assigned maximum ladder points in a separate email. If you see something missing, or if you violently disagree with a point assignment, please let us know and we'll check it out. This is going to be a learning process for all of us.

The AOCC Competition Ladder will have a rolling 12 month cycle. When the results for the current year's version of any particular contest are available, the results from the prior year's version of that same contest will drop out of the ladder calculation. The intent is to encourage ongoing participation, not enshrine past glories.

F. Ladder Format

The ladder results will be updated after each contest and displayed on the AOCC website in chart form, with club member callsigns in the first column and the various ladder categories as headings for the other columns. Each member's cumulative ladder points will be displayed for each category, but I'm hoping to be able to include some HTML code that allows re-sorting of the listings within your web browser by just clicking on the column heading. Want to see the ranking for CW? Click on that column heading and hopefully the chart will re-sort to show the ranking for that category. The same should hold for the other categories, including the callsigns. I haven't verified that the sorting mechanism works yet, though, so please don't crucify me if it doesn't.

G. Eligibility

The AOCC Competition Ladder is open to any current club member regardless of experience level, station capability, or geographical location. If you've paid your dues, your contest scores will count toward your ladder standing, subject to any limitations described above. If this gets to be a problem, such as a club member in Maine running away with the Single Band 160m category, we'll address it later.