On Public Logs and Mid-Winter Contests

February and March are at the heart of the winter contest season. Below we look at the CQ World Wide WPX RTTY weekend, the ARRL DX Contests, and the CQ World Wide 160-meter phone contest, along with a discussion of public logs, using data from the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) for contest analysis, CQ Contest Hall of Fame nominations, and the Dayton Contest University scholarships for young hams.

Public Logs

This month we consider some of the pros and cons of publishing contest logs after scoring (see this issue’s DX column and associated discussion between Bob’s column and this one). Below, we also suggest exploring tools made available by Tomi Kallio, OH2BBT, to analyze the RBN data from a selection of recent CW and RTTY contests. Both published logs and the RBN data can be employed to better understand past contests and to develop strategies for future competitions.

It isn’t all about winning. I have used published contest logs just to get an idea