One thing I feel strongly about is the second of Bill's situations
posted today: getting your club or group together and comparing logs and
calls, making corrections and then sending the entry in. Over the
years, I have tried to help new contesters (or old contesters getting
back into the game) by reviewing their logs for obvious (to me) errors
and suggestions as to how to be more accurate in logging. I have always
felt it would be wrong to do so before the other station submitted his
log even if it would have helped our club aggregate or team score. I
felt it was helpful to them, but should not be used to change their
claimed score at all.
I try to submit as accurate a log as possible and review logs after the
contests for apparent errors and try to think what must have been the
actual call or information if an error seems obvious. If I change it to
make it wrong, I will hurt my score. Most of the time, if I change it
to make it right, I am reducing my claimed score because these contacts
often turn out to be duplicates when correctly logged or to not be a
multiplier as corrected. As someone else has said, I want my log to
reflect the actual QSO made (or to delete QSOs not made) as possible,
but I draw the line at asking for help in a single operator situation.
In a multi-operator situation, I may consult with other operators of
that station, but not with others.
I have never used the super-check partial at my own station, but have
had it available at MS or MM operations. I have never used it post
contest to try to guess who was actually worked. I have occasionally
used a data base, such as the call book, to see if my instinct that a
call was really impossible was correct.
I don't have the capability to record a contest. I'd hate to see that
a requirement for a top log. It would be interesting to listen to a
recorded contest, but I don't have a strong feeling on disqualifying
anyone who listens to the recording and corrects logging errors before
sending in the log. It seems to me that it would be definitely wrong to
add to the log calls of other stations heard apparently thinking they
were in QSO when you were actually working someone else. I imagine in a
long contest, there might be a few like that. But you haven't sent
their call at all and didn't work them at all. They may be working
someone else on or near your frequency. It would be a risky thing to do
and most logging programs would make it difficult to do. I suppose you
could delete a dupe at a nearly the same time and add the station that
you now thing may have logged you. Insofar as correcting non-obvious
logging errors, I doubt I would have the patience to listen to a 48-hour
contest to see if I could catch one. It might help those people who
have the poor practice of not sending the correct callsign of the
station being worked (sending only partials or not correcting an error
orginally sent), but it doesn't seem sporting to me. I don't know that
I'd disqualify them if it could be proved what they did, but it is a
practice that shouldn't be encouraged since it might tend to encourage
poor operating habits during the contest. "Oh well, just send QSL and
I'll figure it out from the tape afterwards," but the other guy may not
know whether to log the QSO or not. Incidentally, this reminds me of FD
this past weekend when I worked several guys on CW who never sent my
call at all. After a lot of ? and QRZ, they would finally give an
exchange and I'd send my call several times more and (reluctantly) an
exchange, and they would QSL and QRZ and never had sent any part of the
call of they station they were logging. I know Trey's advice in that
situation, don't give your exchange until he sends your call, but some
of the guys on FD were so bad that I gave in and didn't hold out for a
callsign acknowledgement. If tape recording is going to be mandatory if
one hopes for a top score, I'll have to ask someone to re-transmit the
info on how for a technologically impaired person to accomplish this.
73 to all,
John, K4BAI/8P9HT.
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