plus a few thought of my own.
1. I have never heard of any serious contester (well, serious or not) who
used access to open
logs as a tool to figure out “who to avoid cuz they are a crummy
operator.” Every contester
I know wants to work everybody (if they count for points).
2. In terms of Open Logs serving to reveal strategy, I have some real issues
with this line of reasoning.
Here are some of my thoughts and opinions:
a. Someone who is not in the top ten has little reason to fear having
their “secrets” revealed.
This is almost an oxymoron.
b. Throughout my contest career, whenever I have asked someone to
share their log with me,
they have (and vice-versa). Sharing log information with friend
or foe is nothing new.
c. Contesters are, in reality, broken into tiers by multiple
measures. The most obvious tier (to me),
is how much time is invested in contesting (sitting in the
chair). If you are serious about winning
or even improving your score, you will do a lot better by
operating more hours as compared to
discovering some “secret strategy.”
d. As others have pointed out, no two stations hear or transmit the
same. Even if the operators
have identical skills and even if the stations are identical
(which never happens), propagation is
the ruling force and no amount of looking at a log (or logs) will
change that. Odds are (for most
of us) that we need to improve our hardware (mostly outside) if
we want to more closely emulate
the log of someone who did better than we did. Study their log
all you want; if you can’t hear
them or they can’t hear you, OH2BAD.
e. There are no secrets to learn. Anyone worth their salt at
contesting (meaning a die-hard, full time
contester) knows everything already or can access it with the
multitude of applications and publications
already out there. The trick is simply in the appropriate
application of that knowledge. Skill differential
is far more important than anything you can learn by looking at
logs, unless you are a newbie.
f. Probably the real thing to learn by looking at other logs is MOVE
TO A BETTER LOCATION…and not many
of us can realistically do that.
3. I still think the value of open logs is DAYLIGHT and enhanced confidence
in the integrity of the scores, or
more accurately, in the sequence of finish of the scores. It’s also nice
to know that if an error or two is
found, that you can report it back to the contest sponsors and have the
director thank you for contributing
to the improvement process.
4. As for the NASCAR analogy, I’ll try this one. Imagine that you and your
50,000 friends (and millions on TV)
gather to watch the competition. You see all of the cars lined up at the
starting line. The flag drops and
then a giant curtain drops over the entire oval, blocking your view. You
can walk around the oval and pick
the curtain up here or there, but you can’t see more than that. And when
the race is over, someone
announces who won. Open logs are sort of like “let’s go the video tape.”
Not exactly the same, but you
get the idea. At least you can see the efforts of the other competitors,
especially if you just beat them out
or they just edged you out. It is not perfect, and maybe not even really
good, but it’s better than being
kept in the dark other than for the line scores. At least that is what I
think.
5. Finally, as an example, recently I had an article published in NCJ about
“how” I won the QRP category in an
ARRL DX test. My competition and I exchanged logs and we could see the
scores go back and forth until
the last couple hours, where I got lucky. I don’t think either of learned
much, if anything, but it was a fun
exercise. If either of us had invested more time operating, our
individual score would have been better…
probably substantially so. Nothing learned there except to sit in the
chair. More recently, I did the same
with K2DM. George has been contesting a long time and in the last one, he
beat me. When I looked at
his log and compared it to mine, you know what I found out? I found out
that he beat me right out of the
box and never looked back. I was never ahead of his score. Did his
hardware suddenly change or did
either of us suddenly have a change in skill or knowledge? Did he do
something that I should have done
instead of what I was doing? Nope. He just beat me that time. What did
I learn by looking at his log?
Nothing that I could use “against him” next time; just that he won and did
so soundly. But it was very
nice to see the other half of the race, even if nothing could be learned
from it (and nothing was expected
to be learned).
de Doug KR2Q
USUAL DISCLAIMER: The thoughts expressed above are my own are not necessarily
reflective of any group
or contest sponsor with whom I may be associated.
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