Lots of interesting discussions about assistance... But I think the key issue
is being over looked.
The root of all assistance is the logging software. Consider...
- it tells you that you have a dupe thereby saving you time
- it lets you know you need a station on a new band
- it is the conduit for all evil such as spots, pre-fills, SCP, SO2R etc
- it calculates a probable score for you as a measure of your progress
- it measures your rate thereby inciting you to try harder or not slack off
- it sends CW for you
- it send CQ using a voice keyer
- it avoids you having to note the frequency, mode, time for each Qso
... I'm sure I'm missing many others...
Yes this message is dripping with sarcasm. After all, sarcasm is the epitome
of the British humour and while you can take the ham out of Britain, you can't
totally remove the Britain from the ham.
A non-sarcastic and serious suggestion...
If you truly want to remove assistance then create two categories.
- manual operation - no software, no logger, no keyer, everything by and for
the operator
- everything else
Oh and the contests that require only electronic logs? Well, I guess you get
to type everything into a spreadsheet after the contest - no?
I am not taking issue with the the assistance versus non-assisted debate. If
that's important to you, I respect that. But let's not lose sight of what
assistance really means and then consider whether or if we want to go back to
the past.
For those that do, I respect that choice and suggest we create a "vintage"
category for those contests that are open to supporting this life choice.
Stu K6TU, ex G8HQA, DA4BM, N6TTO
SCP maintainer looking forward to job elimination.
- Mis-spellings, typos and grammatical errors courtesy of finger swipes
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