Tutorial - Planning for a DX Contest

Perhaps you are like many and firmly believe you do not need to plan for operating on HF. Most likely you have enough experience with HF propagation to have a good idea which band too use during each part of the day. That is indeed true you can simply get on spin the dial and switch bands until you find the activity.  

However chances are you will miss some openings. In addition to short propagation “openings” to various parts of the world there are “long-great-circle openings” that might surprise you with exceptional “multiplier” contacts. For example from here in the Texas panhandle during the Spring DX contests there are long-great-circle openings in the late afternoon or early evening to the Far East. Sometimes you can work the same stations by “short-great-circle path” but the long-great-circle path can be far better and easily get you through a pileup or to an otherwise weak station.

In any case by using WinCAP Wizard you will do better in the contest and that directly translates to more fun. WinCAP Wizard provides a Contest-Plan SmartReport to help you plan an operating schedule before the contest and a “real-time” Contest-Plan SmartChart for reference during the contest. Additionally the Coverage-Analysis View running during the contest is not only useful but is a real delight.

In this tutorial we will demonstrate “How to” for three WinCAP Wizard tools:

1. Setup the “Prediction Batch” and prepare a Contest-Plan SmartReport prediction
2. Use the Contest-Plan SmartChart for “real-time” reference during the contest
3. Use the Coverage-Analysis View for additional reference and “real-time” fun during the contest.

Step One – Prepare the "Prediction Batch" Prediction Set –

The Contest-Plan makes good use of the "Prediction Batch" type prediction set. A Contest-Plan compatible "prediction batch" must be for five frequencies – standard contest bands - and fourteen "circuits". The first seven "prefix" fields must match the last seven and be in same order. The first seven are short-great-circle circuits and the last seven are long-great-circle circuits. The "mode" and "quality" - obviously - must be the same in all fourteen circuits. These circuits are between your station and the seven target areas of the world that are considered to have the largest number of operators.

The default WinCAP Wizard install provides two pre-configured Prediction-Batch Manager groups - one for CW and another for SSB - for use in creating Contest-Plan prediction views. Lets use a CW contest for this example. Additionally there are several other pre-configured “input parameter groups” provided which we can use.

Access the Prediction-Batch Manager from the Master-Control Palette Menu item. First we must select the desired “prediction batch table” - in the Prediction-Batch Manager click the button labeled “Switch” to access the Prediction-Batch-Table Selector. A “prediction batch table” is simply a “group” of target locations complete with “input parameter groups” containing most of the information necessary to create a VOACAP prediction “set”. In the Prediction-Batch-Table Selector double click the entry under the “Name” column heading that reads “ubContestPlan-CW” to quickly open that prediction-batch table and return to the Prediction-Batch Manager. You may wish to note a few things about this “ContestPlan-CW”. The “Prefix” column identifies each target by the two-character-continent abbreviation where the target is located. The “System Group” column references a group of “system parameters” just like those in the “System-Parameters Manager” and the “System” page of the “Circuit-Configuration Manager”. The “X Ant Group” is a reference to the group of “transmit” antennas and the “R Sys Group” is a reference to a “Receive System” group. The “R Sys Group” is the “receive end” antenna and local man-made noise.

The default installed Prediction-Batch “ContestPlan-CW” group should be configured reasonably well for general-purpose use. The most important thing for you to adjust is likely the transmit power – with the button labeled “X Ant” you could change all circuits at once to something like the provided “little pistol” input parameter group - but lets use the default 1.5 KW for this exercise as the resulting predictions will be more interesting.

Analyze the Prediction Batch –

You are now ready to Analyze the Contest-Plan prediction batch – in the Prediction-Batch Manager click the button labeled Analyze to execute the VOACAP engine and prepare the prediction set. In a few seconds the prediction set will be ready and – depending on what is selected in Results, Default Predictions Views, Prediction Batch – you may be presented with several charts and reports. By default the Contest-Plan types are not selected so close all of the default charts and reports.

Step Two - Examine the Contest-Plan Views –

SmartChart -

Click the Charts button on the Master-Control Palette and move down to Prediction Batch and click the last item labeled “Contest-Plan SmartChart”. The last prediction created is always opened by default. The Contest-Plan SmartChart can be sized to occupy a small portion of your desktop and stays “in sync” with the current time making it useful for “real-time” reference during the contest – it provides you with quick information to help make additional band change decisions when the planned band is no longer producing the contacts you feel it should. Each hour row has space to hold a "percent probability value" for each band and circuit during the hour. If the "percent probability value" is zero it's replaced with a hyphen as this seems to un-clutter the display and enhance readability. The goal is to find the highest "percent probability value" for each hour and therefore discover which band and target area provide the best potential for the highest number of contacts. For detailed information on the Contest-Plan SmartChart – see that section of the help file or manual.

SmartReport -

Click the Reports button on the Master-Control Palette and move down to Prediction Batch and click the last item labeled “Contest-Plan SmartReport”. Be patient, it takes a few seconds for the SmartReport to appear as the necessary “tables” are actually being built. The last prediction created is always opened by default.

The Contest-Plan SmartReport actually is three reports in one. The three buttons labeled “Quality” and “Probability” and “Signal Level” select the report-type. The drop-down list for CW and SSB is available when a Quality type report is selected. The default report type is “Probability” – which is based on the K9LA method, The “Signal Level” report is based on the N6BV method and the “Quality” report uses the KU5S method. See the Contest-Plan SmartReport section for details on each of these methods. We believe the “Probability” method is slightly better than the others so it’s the default and the type we will discuss for this exercise.

Although the SmartReport is five pages in length – pages four through five describe antenna and circuit information, which we don’t need for this exercise. Print the first page of the SmartReport and study it a bit.

To print just the first page of the SmartReport follow these steps:

1. Just above the actual report area of the window is the “Print” button - a small square button with a printer icon, or glyph. See the Report section for more detailed information on the print dialog window. Click the “Print” button and a fairly standard print dialog window appears.
2. In the print dialog window area named “Page Range” select the “Current Page” option.
3. Click the print dialog OK button to print the page and dismiss the window.

The SmartReport is similar to the SmartChart display but is primarily intended for printing and per-contest planning. Notice the first column on the left is labeled “UT/LT” for “coordinated universal time” or Zulu time and “local civil time” with UT hours from 00 through 24 – hours 00 and 24 are the same and both are shown to better illustrate continuity. The “local civil time” is calculated from the “time zone” you selected when you created your “station” group; see the Station – Circuit-Configuration Manager section. Some of us tend to become easily confused converting between time zones – in any case this feature makes using the SmartReport easier.

When all target areas and bands aren’t enabled in the configuration – the default - the SmartReport will have several blank columns. We hide the less productive bands and target areas to make using the report easier.

The default SmartReport is rather simple as it shows only two target areas for each band. Like the SmartChart each hour row has space to hold a "percent probability value" for each band and circuit during the hour. If the "percent probability value" is zero it's replaced with a hyphen for enhanced readability. The goal is to find the highest "percent probability value" for each hour and therefore discover which band and target area provide the best potential for the highest number of contacts. For best results use a highlighter type marker to shade the bands and target areas you see as most productive during each of the 24 hours. You now have a reasonably good plan for your operating schedule and this should improve your contest score and provide more fun for the same amount of time you were likely going to spend operating.

Chances are some of your predicted "percent probability values" have an asterisk (*) next to them indicating the long-great-circle path should be better than the short-great-circle path. It will pay to check on these but – again from here in the Texas panhandle – although the "percent probability values" are typically small I see predictions for 15M long-great-circle paths being better than the short-great-circle path to Europe around 1800Z and haven’t yet actually found that path better. In contrast the long-great-circle path in the spring - mentioned above - to the Far East has clearly proven to be better as predicted.

You may also wish to look for "percent probability values" that indicate brief openings to various parts of the world – to do this use the button labeled “Configure” - these may provide contacts on bands with areas you might otherwise miss.

Additionally you may want to examine the other two types of SmartReport – the prediction results will be almost the same but there will be some differences. For detailed information on the Contest-Plan SmartReport – see that section of the help file or manual.

Step Three – Preparing a Coverage-Analysis Prediction Set –

See the section named: Tutorial – Preparing a Coverage-Analysis Prediction Set