CQ WW Zone Pair QSOs: 2005

I considered calling this post "The CQ Not-So-World-Wide Contest'.

Anyone who has participated in CQ WW quickly realises the gross variation in activity around the world. I decided to plot the number of QSOs made per zone pair, never having seen such a plot (although doubtless they exist somewhere), and I discovered that such graphs represent said variation in a way that I found quite shocking.

These are the data for 2005; rather than create one unwieldy post, I decided to provide the graphs in a series of posts, one for each year.

The plots are created from the augmented file (cq-ww-2005--2017-augmented.xz; see here for details of the augmented format) derived from the public logs.

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 produced for each band, as well as 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. (A zone pair with no QSOs that meet the above criteria appears in black on the figures.)

I refrain from passing comment on the figures here -- I think that their story is quite obvious.