This is my own FINAL tally of the 80m QRP Fox hunt season for 2008/9 as of week 20. This is not endorsed by the sponsor, though I have taken great pain to ensure the results are as accurate as possible based on logs posted to the QRP Fox hunt Yahoo group and my own home grown log checking scripts.
Being an active FOX and hound, as well as a radio sport competitor, I’m always interested in timely results and standings. I also believe that more timely results help to keep up the interest in a particular event as well as grab the interest of new folks. So, given there has been little posted to the official QRP Fox Hunt web site (www.qrpfoxhunt.org) regarding scoring, I took the liberty to tally, compile and display what I thought were interesting aspects of the various hunts. These include the usual Top Fox and Top Hound rankings, as well as combined weekly Fox Team Results, Best Fox DX and Total Fox DX in miles and some graphic QSO Maps plotting fox to hound QSOs.
I don’t blame the sponsors for the lack of timeliness in their posted results given there was no official stance on when one would expect to see them. I learned the hard way that it is not an easy job to tally fox and hound results, even though the sponsor had posted strict rules for posting logs. In many instances the log submission rules weren’t exactly followed. The free form method for both logging and posting created many issues. For example many of the logs had to be massaged, including, reformatting, or filling in lacking data as defined by the rules. Issues included: logging no RST, logging duplicate contacts, using improper log line delimiters and transposing the name and state fields. Log lines should have been of the form:
TIME CALL RST SEC NAME PWR
with the last two log lines containing that of the 2 FOXes, but replacing RST with the word “FOX”.
To assist in posting my various hunt data I decided to write several (well 14 to be exact) log scripts in the PERL language to digest, cross check, tally and display various results. Upon my initial tallying of logs in week 15 it became obvious that there are a number of busted calls logged by the foxes. Looking closely at the original Top Hound rankings list I could see more than 100 hound call signs that worked only 1 fox. Upon further inspection I saw a number of 1-off calls, or normally worked hound call signs with 1 incorrect letter or 1 missing letter. Initially I did not remove any QSOs from the logs, nor did I correct any bad calls when posting my first round of results. After several emails and web site comments about my data I decided it was best to make an attempt to clean the logs and re-score them accordingly. In radio sporting events, log integrity is highly regarded, so I provide this data as valuable feedback and not to call out or by any way demean the fox participants.
From this point forward I will use several check log scripts to attempt to ensure each fox logged the correct hound QSO data to include call sign, name and QTH. This was accomplished by correlating fox logs with data retrieved from QRZ.com and logs from the other fox participants. You can click, download and review the following 80m Original Fox Logs and the 80m Cleaned Fox Logs.
Below are links to results, supporting data and tables to include Top Foxes, Top Fox Teams and Top Hounds. There are three mileage based tables showing Best Fox DX, Total Fox DX and Best Hound DX in miles.
My Busted QSOs table, shows a list of removed hound QSOs and the reasons why. Other supporting data includes Log Info, which is a tally of all hound name and QTH reports as copied by the foxes and QRZ.com info for all hounds worked. In turn I have used this data to build a Fox Log Accuracy table that ranks the Foxes with the most accurately copied, logged and submitted logs.
Finally there are two types of graphical Fox QSO maps and two types of Hound maps. The first Fox map shows a static map indicating where all hounds were worked by a fox. The vectors run from the fox QTH to each hound’s QTH grid square. The color of the grid represents how many hounds were contacted in that grid according to the color legend in the upper right-hand corner of the map. These are color coded 1 (grey) through 8 (pink). The second type of Fox map is an animated time-lapse map for each fox, showing where hounds were worked per 10 minute segment of the 90 minute hunt from 0200-0330 UTC. There are 9 frames per animation showing at about a 2 second frame rate. The map title indicates the beginning UTC time for the 10 minute segment being displayed. The animation will continually repeat itself in a loop.
The first Hounds map shows the distribution of Foxes worked by hounds from various parts of the country. Its legend is different with colors indicating less than 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36 and 40 foxes contacted thresholds. The second type of hound map is generated on the fly based on a web user entering a hound’s call. The call is search for amongst all the FOX logs and if its found, a map is generated that displays the hounds grid square color coded to how many foxes were contacted. In addition each FOX QTH is labeled with the call sign and a blue ring, for each successfully made contact . If a FOX wasn’t contacted over the season, a blue ring and the word FOX is printed over the QTH of the missed FOX.
Follow the links below to view the hound and fox data from my various log parsing scripts:
80m Top Foxes
80m Top Fox Teams
80m Best Fox DX
80m Total Fox DX
80m Busted QSOs
80m Fox Log Accuracy
80m Log Info
80m QRZ Info
80m Top Hounds
80m Best Hound DX
80m Fox QSOs by All Hounds Map
80m Individual Hound Maps
80m Fox QSO Maps Week 01-10
80m Fox QSO Maps Week 11-20
80m Time-lapse Fox QSO Maps Week 01-10
80m Time-lapse Fox QSO Maps Week 11-20
Very good work, AndyZ. Like you, I can’t critize the the fox committee for not posting the results, but it sure would be nice to know how you stood. I think the foxii do a good job considering the problems we are having with the bands these days.
Thanks for the report. Looking forward to seeing the 40 mtr postings. later?
72 Bill P.
Thank you Andy for your time and effort to come up with the 15 week tally for the foxii and hounds. Knowing where everybody stands can make the final five
weeks more exciting. I hope you are working on a 40m
tally. I’ll be looking forward to that one also.
72, Larry K4PIC
Congratulations on a first class job! I like to look over the posted logs and form a vague idea of what geograpic areas seem best represented in a particular hunt. Without knowing how many hounds have been present but unsuccessful, it is risky to make assumptions with regard to how propagation conditions played out during a particular hunt. I must say that in every 40-meter hunt this season successful hounds in Canada and the northern half of the US have been very few, and that certainly bespeaks a consistent propagation pattern.
72,
Charles, W2SH
Outstanding! If you’ll take the job, I nominate you for “Score Keeper.” Please post for 40 meters.
Hi, Andy,
My first reaction was, “Amazing. How does he do this.” You said Pearl scripts. Does that mean Linux, as well? I found the QSO maps to be fascinating. I imagine that most of the 80 meter antennas used by the foxes were dipoles. Pattern differences were notable. Location probably explains some of it, but, still, remarkable.
I see that I should pick a name and stick with it. As a hound, I absentmindedly use both Pete and Peter for my name. I’ll check my birth certificate and stick with one from now on.
Many thanks for coming up with all this info. You clearly have put a lot of time and effort into putting it all together. Very interesting, and much appreciated.
Thanks, Pete, no2d.
Hi Andy–thanks for jumping in there to help with the scorekeeping. Its done very well and would like you to continue. You get alot of milage out of the info you get in. As indicated you can get alot awards with the style your using. Keep up the great work and will listen for you on the Fox and Spartan Sprint contests. Beast 72’s–Jim Akre/wa9tze…………..
Andy, this is multi-cool. Really superb analysis and presentation. The time lapse is fascinating, as is the remarkable geographic spread of the hounds. Thanks so much for doing this.
Bill C/K4KSr
Thanks Andy! I will have to spend some more time to digest all the information. The time-lapse maps are very interesting. Very impressive.
Jim
Great Work Andy, tnx
73
Bob
KB2FEL WV/FM09me
Andy-
The results of your log analysis are really great. I’ve learned something from each one of them. Thanks for taking the time to build the scripts and post the information.
72/3, Ron.
Very nice job. I look forward to your report each time and it shows so much. This should help everyone, somehow. Best 72’s–Jim Akre/wa9tze…………..
Hi,
Thanks for going to all the work to post this. CQC has not updated their website in a long time.
Would like to point that I got a new call sign last Nov, so AB9QN and N9IN are the same hound.
73
Lincoln
N9IN, formerly AB9QN