Which band or mode: visual perspective

Sorry I’ve been noodling about with something for work so here is a visual display of band and mode popularity. You can click on the things to see more detail.

http://moosedata.com/sotastats.htm

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Interesting :+1:

Pie charts, so simply explain things

Making me in the 34.2% of of things :smiley:

Good one

Karl

I’m glad you like it Karl. It may sound trite but that wasn’t hard to do. I’m not really a web programmer, I write code that simulates semiconductors that haven’t been made yet. These semiconductors go into mobile phones, tablets, set-top boxes, car dashboards, engine management systems. Web programming is something I have little exposure too. I only run the database because I didn’t hide quick enough when the job was being offered! This came out of the need to express regresion test results from stuff I do at work in a better way. Thanks to Mr. Google, there’s a lovely library of code ready to use… all you have to do is point some numbers at Mr. Google’s code and you get those pretty pie charts or lots more.

It’s good at showing the main modes used and most popular bands. But that is a static page, i.e. it’ll always show the same data. It would be nice to make it dynamic so that whenever you request the page the data is fetched live and then drawn. A little more tricky to do but not impossible. Certainly not something that you can bash out in 5 minutes like this page.

Thanks Andy, I’ll echo Karl’s comments - it’s great to see a pie chart to understand a high level picture.

I was surprised to see so little activity on 10m, hence one reason for the challenge in 2015 I guess.

Thanks for doing this - whether you found it straight forward to do or not, you took the time to do it - so thanks!

73 Ed.

We like anything to do with pies in Macclesfield. Thanks.

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It’s a personal preference, but I would like to see that as a horizontal bar graph as the visual representation of the various lengths of bar seems to mean more to me than a pie chart.

It’s an argument I have with work colleagues who all seem to follow the standard pie chart route as well.

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A pie chart is the most appropriate diagram to use when representating share of a total Dave, hence no doubt why Andy chose it.

I can understand where Dave is coming from, we have similar arguments about whether mouse wheels move the viewport or moves the data. i.e. scroll down for more or up for more!

It took moments to let you see both types together, Pie and Bar.

http://moosedata.com/sotastats.htm ( now shows both, don’t forget to scroll or click on the colours)

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Excellent work! (referring to the page) and amazingly hardcore coding skills regarding for your day job! I do code myself at the office (academia) but nowhere near the level of simulating hardware!

EDIT: that CW % makes me work harder every night to learn it :slight_smile:

Still 54.6% phone against 45.3% CW. It’s data’s the poor relation there… :wink:

The bands bar chart might be prettier sorted by frequency rather than popularity… :wink:

But where is the combined data?
We need a chart to show us the split of modes worked on each band :smile:
(obviously 30m is self explanatory except for a few VKs!)

Pete

We need some Venn diagrams.

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There’s always one more tweak… :wink:

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heheheh

It’s interesting to note that 5MHz is the 5th most popular band, considering it’s limited availability thats quite amazing and it beats 12m which had an unfair advantage last year :wink:

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From what I have been observing manually is that 12m activation’s are on the decline. I would have expected more 6m activity by now in preparation for the new challenge.

If cycle 24 doesn’t peak again we could find that its a massive disappointment in comparison to the 12m challenge. 60m is an excellent way of avoiding the QRM on 40m.

It would be interesting if Andy’s statistical data could show the rate of change in both modes and bands over time as SOTA has progressed.

Yes and from one of the bar charts it’s instantly obvious that there’s been nearly twice as many contacts on 40M compared to 2M :smile:

I find the bar graph much easier to show to people to indicate where, say, most of their energy is being used.

As I say, it’s a personal thing.

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We had a 12m challenge that added about 60000 QSOs in the 12months it ran, before 12m was a niche low interest band.

There’s no regular propagation at present in the North. Some in VK have been playing. Sure you can haul a beam up for 6m but you will be rewarded with few contacts. They call it the magic band because it’s magic the way all the people appear on it when there’s a sniff of DX about!

Sporadic E Jonathon, it’s why the 10/6 challenge is when it is. There’s always SpE at those times.

I used to use it extensively but learnt enough CW to use 40m. I gave it a whirl last Spring and found it was full of people talking about how their tomatoes needed to wear a truss and the operation their nasturtiums were waiting for. I thought I was 80m for a moment :smile:

As said, this came out of needing to show some data at work, I could legitimately play with my data to try ideas and get paid for it. The issue is this interesting but not high priority. Really I need to learn how to embed client-side Javascript files that are dynamically generated back into ASP.NET pages so they render nice.

It uses both, sporadic E is much more “sporadic” event wise then a peak of sunspot activity even if they do tend to come in twos. I would have thought you would rely more on solar layer ionisation with this challenge rather then random bounces off the clouds.

To me its going to be a nuisance to bring up a good but equally big antenna to find there is no action. From what I have listened to from others it is a game of patience which doesn’t bode well for a summit activation where time is limited. Just my thoughts in thinking of getting involved with it. Dunno, is it worth the effort I keep asking myself. Motivation comes from wanting to use a different band to 40m for quick HF activation’s, that offers alternative propagation.

Its a shame 12m is not being used as much, It was great to see how well people were doing with it, with the challenge in place.

It doesnt sound like you’ve spent much time on 6m? In my experience Es is far less “sporadic” than F2 openings which I’ve not experienced this cycle at all! During the peak of the summer Es season there can be openings on many if not most days. Having said that I have watched the way it can be very shy on contest days :slight_smile:

Many people forget 6M is also a vhf band and supports iono/troposcatter so you can also work inter UK almost all the time. I work from io86 to io80 pretty much every contest. less distant qsos will be possible without qro.

An interesting propagation mode that may or may not be possible for SOTA is meteor scatter, I spend a lot of time doing MS on 6 and can work around europe at any time. QRO is not always needed, I have done 5 watts to OE before. Around the peak of the perseids you my well find that the meteor ionisation is so intense that the band resembles a sporadic E opening.

It’s already been said but watch Gabriels excellent site to see what’s happening in the Es world: QSO/SWL real time maps and lists