2025-04-11

Zone-Based Analyses from 2024 CQ WW SSB and CQ WW CW logs

A large number of analyses can be performed with the various public CQ WW logs (cq-ww-2005--2024-augmented.xz; see here for details of the augmented format) for the period from 2005 to 2024.

As usual, there follow a few analyses that interest me. There is, of course, plenty of scope to use the augmented files for further analyses.

Below are some simple zone-based analyses from the logs.

Zones and Distance


As in prior years, we can examine the distribution of distance for QSOs as a function of zone.

Below is a series of figures showing this distribution integrated over all bands and, separately, band by band for the CQ WW SSB and CQ WW CW contests for 2024.

Each plot shows a colour-coded distribution of the distance of QSOs for each zone, with the data for SSB appearing above the data for CW within each zone.

For every half-QSO in a given zone, the distance of the QSO is calculated; in ths way, the total  number of half-QSOs in bins of width 500 km is accumulated. Once all the QSOs for a particular contest have been binned in this manner, the distribution for each zone is normalised to total 100% and the result coded by colour and plotted. The mean distance for each zone and mode is denoted by a small white rectangle added to the underlying distance distribution.

Only QSOs for which logs have been provided by both parties, and which show no bust of either callsign or zone number are included. Bins coloured black are those for which no QSOs are present at the relevant distance.

The resulting plots are reproduced below. I find that they display in a compact format a wealth of data that is informative and often unexpected.


 


Zone Pairs


As in prior years, We can examine the number of QSOs for pairs of zones from the 2024 contests using the augmented file.

The procedure is simple. We consider only QSOs that meet the following criteria:
  1. marked as "two-way" QSOs (i.e., both parties submitted a log containing the QSO);
  2. no callsign or zone is bust by either party.

A counter is maintained for every pair of zones (i.e., 1-1, 1-2, 1-3 ... 40-39, 40-40) and the pertinent counter is incremented once for each distinct QSO between stations in those zones.

Separate figures are provided for each band, led by a figure integrating QSOs on all bands. The figures are constructed in such a way as to show the results for both the SSB and CW contests on a single figure. (Any zone pair with no QSOs that meet the above criteria appears in black on the figures.)

It is clear from these figures, as from those for earlier years, that CQ WW is principally a contest for intra-EU QSOs, and secondarily one for QSOs between EU and the East Coast of North America. This format is undoubtedly popular, as CQ WW, in both its SSB and CW incarnations, would seem by any reasonable measure to be the most popular contest of the year. But I continue to wonder whether there isn't some other format that would more strongly encourage participation from other parts of the world, instead of concentrating activity in these limited areas. Or maybe the sad and simple fact is that, when you get down to it, ham radio basically doesn't exist outside of those areas.











Non-Zero Zone Pairs

The activity between pairs of zones in the CW and SSB CQ WW contests over the period from 2005 to 2024 may be usefully summarised in a single figure:

There are 820 possible zone pairs: (z1, z1), (z1, z2) ... (z1, z40), (z2, z2), (z2, z3) ... (z39, z39), (z39, z40), (z40, z40). The above figure shows the number of different zone pairs actually present in the public logs, for each mode and for each year for which data are available, separated on a band-by-band basis and presented in the form of percentages of the maximum possible count (i.e., 820).

The top two lines require some additional explication: the line marked "MEAN" is the arithmetic mean of the results for the six separate bands for the relevant year and mode. The line marked "ANY" is also constructed from the data for the individual bands, but such that any give zone pair need be present on any one (or more, of course) of the individual bands to be included on the "ANY" line.

Half-QSOs Per Zone for CQ WW CW and SSB, 2005 to 2024

A simple way to display the activity in the CQ WW contests is to count the number of half-QSOs in each zone. Each valid QSO requires the exchange of two zones, so we simply count the total number of times that each zone appears, making sure to include each valid QSO only once.

If we do this for the entire contest without taking the individual bands into account, we obtain this figure:

The plot shows data for both SSB and CW contests over the period from 2005 to 2024 (each year has a rectangle for SSB on the left, and a rectangle for CW on the right). As in earlier posts, I include only QSOs for which both parties submitted a log and neither party bust either the zone or the call of the other party. The black rectangles represent contests in which no half-QSOs were made from (or to) a particular zone. By far the most striking feature of this plot is the way in which activity in EU overwhelms that in the rest of the world.

We can, of course, generate equivalent plots on a band-by-band basis:
 






As in the past, the activity from zones 14 and 15 so overwhelms these figures that in order to get a feel for the activity elsewhere, we need to move to a logarithmic scale:

As in prior years, the figures speak for themselves.


2025-03-26

Statistics from 2024 CQ WW SSB and CQ WW CW logs

A huge number of analyses can be performed with the various public CQ WW logs (cq-ww-2005--2024-augmented.xz; see here for details of the augmented format) for the period from 2005 to 2024.

As in prior years, there follow a few basic analyses that interest me. There is, of course, plenty of scope to use the log files for further analyses, some of which are suggested by the figures below.

Below are some simple analyses of basic statistics from the logs. The 2024 versions of the contests showed more or less normal activity, following several years disrupted by COVID and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The latter, of course, is still under way, but its effect on the contest seems to be decreasing. And we 2024 may well turn out to have been the peak of sunspot cycle 25. 

Number of Logs

Until 2020, the raw number of submitted logs for SSB had been relatively flat for several years; the logs submitted for CW showed a fairly steady annual increase. In 2020, unsurprisingly, the number of logs in both modes increased to new record, probably because of the pandemic; CQ WW SSB 2021 set another record; on CW, the number of logs decreased slightly, but would still have been a record were it not for 2020. 2022 was another year of unusual circumstances: not only was the pandemic still in evidence in much of the world, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with the CQ WW committee's vacillation on how to proceed in light of that invasion -- and then the protest against the committee's position as of the contest dates -- was always going to lead to a reduction in the number of submitted logs. In 2024, the numbers for both modes bounced back up somewhat: on SSB they set a new record, but on CW they still fell short of the 2020 peak.


Popularity

By definition, popularity requires some measure of people (or, in our case, the simple proxy of callsigns) -- there is no reason to believe, a priori, that the number of received logs as shown above is related in any particular way to the popularity of a contest, despite rather frequent conclusory statements to the contrary.

So we look at the number of calls in the logs as a function of time, rather than positing any kind of well-defined positively correlated relationship between log submission and popularity (actually, the posts I have seen don't even bother to posit such a relationship: they are silent on the matter, thereby simply seeming to presume that the reader will assume one). 

However, the situation isn't as simple as it might be, because of the presence of busted calls in logs. If a call appears in the logs just once (or some small number of times), it is more likely to be a bust rather an actual participant -- but the situation is complicated: some participants might a handful of contacts, and select only relatively exotic calls for those QSOs. Or perhaps they just worked their friends. Where to set a cut-off a priori in order to discriminate between busts and actual calls is therefore unclear; but we can plot the results of choosing several such values. 

First, for SSB:


Regardless of how many logs a call has to appear in before we regard it as a legitimate callsign, the popularity of CQ WW SSB during the pandemic surely increased from the doldrums of the prior few years. Complicating the picture in the past couple of years is, of course, the reduction in participation that is (presumably) due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Whatever the cause, the number of calls certainly seems to be well down on the number at a similar point in the last solar cycle


[I note that a plausible argument can be made that the number of uniques will be more or less proportional to the number of QSOs made (I have not tested that hypothesis; I leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to determine whether it is true), but there is no obvious reason why the same would be true for, for example, callsigns that appear in, say, ten or more logs. The interested reader might also consider basing a similar analysis on eXtended Super Check Partial files as created by the drscp program.]

Moving to CW:


On CW, we see that in 2022 the reduction due (presumably) to the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to the number of active calls being the lowest of all the years for which data are available. In 2023, and again in 2024, there was a slight correction; but the numbers of logged calls are still well short of the numbers during the high-sunspot years of the last solar cycle.

 

Geographical Participation


How has the geographical distribution of entries changed over time?

Again looking at SSB first:


The number of entrants from zone 16 continues to recover, but is still well down from historical levels. The number of logs submitted from zone 28 bucked its recent trend by declining slightly. The number of logs from zones outside EU and the US continues to be very small. This can be seen more clearly if we plot the percentage of logs received from each zone as a function of time:

For a so-called "world-wide" contest, it's not very encouraging.

On CW, most zones evidence a sustained long-term increase:

Again we see the expected drop in entries from zone 16 in the past few (invasion-affected) years, but other than that trends continue more or less as before, with the relative increase spread more or less evenly across all zones, with the percentages of logs from each zone barely changing:


It is, I think, of some interest that the change in participation in zone 28 that is obvious on SSB is only gradually making itself felt on CW. Zone 24 is very slowly becoming more common; but, really, it's hard to argue that there have been any substantive changes apart from the ones resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


Activity


Total activity in a contest depends both on the number of people who participate and on how many QSOs each of those people makes. We can use the public logs to count the total number of distinct QSOs in the logs (that is, each QSO is counted only once, even if both participants have submitted a log).

For SSB:

  

There were five years in the most recent solar cycle (cycle 24) in which more QSOs were made than in 2024. It doesn't seem likely that the next four years will all result in more QSOs than 2024, suggesting that, possibly for the first time ever, the peak number of distinct QSOs will probably decrease from one cycle to the next.

 
And for CW:


 

A very similar situation holds to that on SSB. It seems plausible that the greying of the amateur radio community is finally taking its toll. I hope not, but I can't say that these graphs bode well for the years to come.

 

Running and Calling


On SSB, the ongoing gradual shift towards stations strongly favouring either running or calling, rather than splitting their effort between the two types of operation, finally appears to have reached some kind of equilibrium. There was essentially no change between 2018 and 2019, and even a (very) slight reversal of the trend in 2020 and 2021. 2022, however, for the first time saw more than 30% of entrants making no run QSOs at all, a situation that continued in 2023. In 2023, the number of stations making fewer than 10% of their QSOs in a run exceeded 60%, a situation that continued in 2024; there is no sign of a reversal in this telling statistic.


I have not investigated the cause of the decrease in the percentage of stations strongly favouring running, although the public logs could readily be used to distinguish possibilities that spring to mind, such as more SO2R operation, more multi-operator stations, and/or a reluctance of stations to forego the perceived advantages of spots from cluster networks. In any case, it certainly seems that SSB operators seem to fall decisively into one of two camps: runners and callers (look at the quite astonishing bimodal distribution in the first of the two graphs above, with the vast majority nearly always calling other stations).

On CW, the split between callers and runners continues to be much less bimodal than on SSB (as mentioned above, on SSB, more than 30% of entrants have no run QSOs; on CW, the equivalent number is below 10%, and shows no sign of rising appreciatively). The difference in call/run behaviour on the two modes (and the difference in the way that the behaviour has changed over time) is profound, and probably worthy of further investigation. CW continues to appear to exhibit what would seem to be a much healthier split between the two operating styles:




Assisted and Unassisted


We can see how the relative popularity of the assisted and unassisted categories has changed since they were introduced:


 

On CW, there is now no longer more or less equal numbers of assisted and unassisted logs: a gap in favour of assisted operation has now definitely established itself. On SSB the unassisted logs handily exceeds the number of assisted logs. My guess, for what it is worth, is that CW assistance is more widespread partly because it (partially) absolves stations from actually being able to copy at high speed, and partly because the RBN is so effective that essentially all CQing stations are spotted.

I find it particularly interesting that the number of CWU logs has remained essentially unchanged ever since the unassisted category was created.

Looking at the number of QSOs appearing in the unassisted and assisted logs:


(The lines are for the median number of logs; the vertical bars run from 10% to 90%, 20% to 80%, 30% to 70%, 40% to 60%, with opacity increasing in that order.)


A long-term downward trend in the numbers of QSOs in the assisted logs ceased in 2016, and since then the median number of QSOs in the assisted logs has remained essentially unchanged. A more or less constant difference of roughly one hundred QSOs between the median CW and SSB logs (in favour of CW) continues.

Inter-Zone QSOs


We can show the number of inter-zone QSOs, both band-by-band and in total. In these plots, the number of QSOs is accumulated every ten minutes, so there are six points per hour.


The new cycle seems to be near or at its peak. Unfortunately, the CW event suffers by occurring a month later in the year than the SSB event. [I do not understand why the CQ WW committee do not alternate the weekends of the SSB and CW modes; but then, I don't understand a lot of what they do or don't do.]

 

Like the two prior years, 2024 saw fairly ordinary 15m participation on SSB, probably because of signs of activity on 10m. CW saw more activity, presumably because, the CW event being later in the year, 10m did not cooperate to the same extent as it did on SSB.


Much less activity on 20m, in both modes.


As always, CW dominates on 40m; and, within that mode, intra-EU QSOs further dominate. After the first few hours of the contest, very little DX was worked in either of the past couple of years.


80m is always dominated by CW; but 2024 evidenced what appears to be a record low level of activity.


160m paints a similar story to 80m, although the raw QSO counts are about half those on the higher band. Like 80m, 160m activity appears to have sunk to a record low -- certainly much lower than at the equivalent point of the last cycle.

The overall picture shows the arrival of Cycle 25; but it seems clear that the ramp-up appears considerably slower in this cycle, perhaps due to the ongoing dampening effects from the invasion of Ukraine.