Following a comment from Tom K1KI about soliciting QSOs in contests by
spotting yourself on the cluster, I wonder how other clusters around the
world view such activities? Usually I operate a laissez-faire policy and
let everyone spot whatever they want, including themselves, but recently
a number of stations have been going too far and putting out large
numbers of self-spots. When it was suggested to them that this was not
in the spirit of the contest, they pointed out that "Use of Cluster" was
allowed, and that was what they were doing. Several more spots then
appeared, in similar vein, but the station doing the spotting was
different each time. It appeared that what was in fact happening was
that the contest station ops were using the DX/CALL crediting command, or
the SET/ALIAS command in order to make more (but anonymous) self-spots!
Not wishing to censor the activities on the cluster, I allowed it to
continue, but received a number of complaints from users. Other sysops
operate a policy of barring spots of the contest station after they have
done one self-spot, so nobody else can spot them either, which seems
rather drastic.
Some users seem to have used countermeasures, using the DX/CALL facility
to make a spot which _appeared_ to be from the contest station, saying
they were on a particular frequency when in fact they were somewhere else
entirely!
As a cluster sysop, I have to make a moral judgement on this unless the
rules can be made to encompass this rather oblique use of the facilities.
What do you think about this, is it a problem? Should I bar spots of
those who do this? Should I let them get on with it? Is it
self-limiting in that users get irritated by it and positively avoid
contacts with the self-spotters?
One step I have taken to prevent general abuse is to disable the DX/CALL
facility on my cluster node!
Neil G4DBN sysop GB7YDX
>From k2mm@MasPar.COM (John Zapisek) Sat Sep 17 23:22:19 1994
From: k2mm@MasPar.COM (John Zapisek) (John Zapisek)
Subject: CQP Freeware Via FTP
Message-ID: <9409172222.AA12145@greylock.local>
Bob/ND1H asks:
> I've lost track of the CQP freeware. . . . Which FTP site has it?
> Is there a new version this year?
Two CQP freeware programs -- one by Al/AD6E and another by Andy/AE6Y -- are
again available via anonymous FTP. I got updated versions of both programs
from the authors at the NCCC meeting last night. Last year's versions are
also still available.
The FTP site is maspar.maspar.com (192.84.231.1). Log in as "anonymous" or
just "ftp"; give your e-mail address for the password. The directories are
/pub/k2mm/cqp-ad6e and /pub/k2mm/cqp-ae6y. The "cqp94..." versions are the
more recent:
/pub/k2mm/cqp-ad6e:
-r--r--r-- 1 jzap system 69970 Sep 17 14:34 cqp94.zip
-r--r--r-- 1 jzap system 99742 Sep 17 14:34 cqp93.zip
/pub/k2mm/cqp-ae6y:
-r--r--r-- 1 jzap system 161429 Sep 17 14:44 cqp94dos.zip
-r--r--r-- 1 jzap system 330695 Sep 17 14:44 cqp94win.zip
-r--r--r-- 1 jzap system 156533 Sep 17 14:43 cqp93dos.zip
-r--r--r-- 1 jzap system 326195 Sep 17 14:43 cqp93win.zip
AE6Y's programs is available in two versions -- one for DOS and another for
WINDOZE. AE6Y's program also supports SS and WPX, while AD6E's focusses
only on CQP.
Because of its small size, I can a send UUENCODE'd version of AD6E's program
via e-mail. Send a request to k2mm@maspar.com. 73. --John/K2MM
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