Good Morning,
As you are probably already well aware, the listings for the 1997
ARRL 10 Meter Contest are terribly inaccurate. Although I have not lost
out personally (I am in line to win a certificate which I believe might
belong to my friend K1RV, whose call is also missing), I have had to pass
along bad news to 2 DX operators that their scores are missing. All told,
I am personally aware of at least 6 missing calls.
In recent years I have seen major several organizations go through
terrible PR when they just plain screwed up and then failed to properly
handle the situation. (Intel, as well as a couple of government agencies
with 3 letter abbreviations come to mind.) Lest the league become yet
another example, some concrete actions need to be taken. The steps that
are necessary, although painful, appear to be:
1. a printed apology for the mistakes in an upcoming QST
2. a reprint of the entire corrected results
3. corrective actions taken to ensure that this scenario does
not repeat itself for many, many years
I am well aware of the cost in time and money to do this (especially of
item 2), but I see no other way for the league to salvage the situation.
Pertaining to number 3, I would make some suggestions and an offer.
CQ Magazine has had a good system of managing logs for years. Remember
back when all the CQWW W4 logs were lost in transit to the log checkers?
The claimed scores were printed anyway, and everyone was reasonably happy.
My initial suggestion is to do like CQ does - record all the scores off each
log as it is received. Keep this list in a separate place, and adjust it
later as log checking is completed. This way, every submitted score will
be represented. It sounds too simple, but it obviously wasn't done. Also,
CQ for years has had budget limitations for their contest department, but
they have done well with a dedicated crew of volunteers for log checking,
etc. Why shouldn't the league do the same? Consider the necessary
qualifications for integrity, contest knowledge, dependability, etc. and
then approach people who fit those qualifications and see if they would be
willing to commit to doing such a thing. My offer is this - if I fit these
qualifications, then I am willing to offer my services to help correct this
situation.
73, Dave Clemons K1VUT
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