Chris, I appreciate the arguments against the sailboat-racing analogy.
As I see it they fall in two categories - the absence of a "bright line"
separating allowable technologies from those disallowed, and the absence
of any capability for catching cheaters, analagous to pre- and post-race
technical inspection.
Responding to the first objection, I think we can make a clear
distinction - "unassisted" means that no means other than the mind of a
single operator may be used to spot and work stations. I favor an
out-and-out band on decoders of any sort in unassisted classes. If
someone wants or needs to use a decoder, let him enter as Assisted
The second counter-argument is a lot harder to refute. While I cannot
fathom the motivation of those who seek to reach the top levels of our
sport through cheating, they do exist, and attempts at on-site
inspection have failed. I think the solution is two-pronged -- a
reasonable level of active rule enforcement, based on the best current
technology, and a public "flogging" of those who are caught.
Perhaps the best way of dealing with those who do not respect the rules
is to withdraw our respect for them as contesters. Someone who wins,
knows that he cheated and didn't get caught, and takes pleasure from
that, belongs in a lower circle of Dante's inferno.
73, Pete N4ZR
Check out the Reverse Beacon Network at
http://reversebeacon.net,
blog at reversebeacon.blogspot.com.
For spots, please go to your favorite
ARC V6 or VE7CC DX cluster node.
On 3/9/2013 8:48 AM, Christian Schneider wrote:
de N4ZR:
So long as we decide where to draw the lines, and the vast majority of
participants respect the rules (particularly those who wish to have any
respect themselves), none of this needs to happen.
Saiboat racing is alive and well, and nobody feels the need for gas turbine
engines on them.
Pete,
with all respect - many discussions here have shown the difference between
sailboat racing or marathon running and ham contesting. "We have to embrace
new technology as we are a tech hobby and it helps to gain new blood - or do
we still operate with spark transmitters and straight keys?" Argument
solved, end of discussion, development accepted.
Of course most of the developments were evolutionary steps: from straight
key to electronic keyer to memory keyer to computer generated CW. As they
still require human action (even if fewer and fewer) few of them were as
fundamental as i.e. skimmer, which threw the human more or less completely
out of finding stations via S&P (we only HOPE that people verify calls by
ear - they could also safely assume that the few busts are not worth the
time listening even if they were able to).
So for me it seems really difficult to see a generally accepted core of our
activity like in running. Reading discussions about Echolink etc. you find
even very vocal people saying: As long as at least a minimal part is
wireless it is real amateur radio. So where would you draw a line between
widely automatted RTTY-/CW-contesting and robot-contesting to come? Or could
it not be sold as "Only an extension of existing ESM- and
RTTY-grabbing-logic"? The decoded combination "...Callsign test" triggers
grab and call without human command, with following detected exchange
triggering own exchange.
Will the associated dealing with software-tweaking not help to gain new
blood not yet gained for ham radio? Why suddenly stop on the path of
engineering more convenience?
Besides all pro and con - do we really know about a line and do enough
contesters want to draw a line?
Best 73, Chris (DL8MBS)
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