Hi Stan,
You have beautifully summarized my feelings on the unfairness for a
given station of SSB spots or lack of them, that I have seen and
experienced over the years in DX contests.
Some beauty pageant "favorites" get spotted seemingly endlessly by a
coterie of friends, club members, and well-wishers etc. which is fine,
while others calls are summarily ignored and NOT spotted which is NOT
fine. The funny part is some of the "favorites" routinely downplay the
importance and advantage of the spotting of their helpers - I believe
that they are knowingly downplaying and attempting to conceal their
advantage.
Spotting MATTERS - that's WHY people spot the stations that they do and
don't spot others! And self-spotting definitely equalizes the playing
field even if it is done on one network like DX Summit. Given my lack
of awareness of such things because I almost always operate SO
NON-Assisted, I never even heard of the website that Dmitri mentioned.
DX Summit is the only one that I have access to or looked at, so, as he
pointed out, I was not even being that effective self-spotting on just
DX Summit, which means that self-spotting (evening up the SSB contest
playing field) could have been far more effective for me.
I get the discomfort that people have about self-spotting - either those
who refuse to do it, or those who do it either to learn how useful it
might or might not be (like I did this past weekend) or those who fully
embraced it immediately, either because they were doing it
surreptitiously before or wanted to do it but could not and are glad to
be able to do so now without question.
After my experiences this weekend, I intend to do it in future ARRLDX
contests but will not miss it in CQWW. I still do not like
self-spotting, but I am now aware of its advantages and there are many.
For those that think that "Spotting doesn't help" or used that as an
excuse for not doing it, I say "Bunk!". Spotting ALWAYS mattered and a
simple log analysis would easily prove it.
I believe that people should spot others whether they are friends or
not, club members or not, etc. If you spot someone you are
acknowledging that it helps the spotted, or that you are attempting to
help them even if you do not "Believe". So why not help others too?
It's certainly not fair or sporting if you don't.
And, if you are going to self-spot, then have the guts to self-spot WITH
YOUR OWN CALLSIGN!
After the contest I looked up the spots of many SO callsigns.
There were some that did not self-spot. COOL!
Some self-spotted with their own calls. Doing it the right way. GOOD!
Some self-spotted with alternate calls they use in other contests or
"club callsigns" domiciled at their own qth and from their own station.
Why the subterfuge? You KNOW that it is your callsign that only you use
when you operate, so this WAS self-spotting that was being camouflaged
as though someone else was actually spotting you. Is that ethical? HECK
NO in my book! Others may disagree.
And one opr., who is well known, used a BOGUS FOREIGN CALL to self-spot
while operating in the US.
WTF is that? Knock it off - That's completely unethical! as well as
totally unnecessary.
There were also some well-known ops self-spotting under callsigns "SWL",
"SWL-1", etc. Again. WTF is that?
And why play that silly game?
If you are going to self-spot then DO SO. It IS allowed. But do it under
your own callsign or, if operating from a Multi, then self-spot with
your callsign and self-spot the callsign of the multi-op. But don't
self-spot with a callsign that doesn't exist or from a callsign from a
foreign country which misrepresents who is actually doing the spotting.
SHEESH!
Also, when I self-spotted, I did not provide any info other than my
call. I did not list my state or write out a comment like "Beaming JA".
I wanted to be as "clean" as possible. I have no idea if we are
allowed to add information like that or not, so I did not add anything
whereas some others did.
I don't know what the rules are, if any, on self-spotting or how often
we could do it. I spent a lot of time searching for any ARRL guidance
on that and was not able to find anything.
73
Bob, KQ2M
On 2023-03-09 08:32, Stan Stockton wrote:
John,
Here is my take on self spotting. On CW you have a perfectly fair
situation. If you can generate a signal that can be heard by a
Skimmer station you will be spotted automatically by the RBN. There is
no reason for your friends to spot you or for you to spot yourself.
It will have minimal to no impact unless you don’t have a signal
picked up by any Skimmer stations.
On SSB, without self- spotting, you have an unfair situation where the
difference between winning and losing could be the difference in how
many of your friends spot you versus how many of your competitors’
friends spot them.
It would be totally unfair for a station to win a contest because he
was in a big club with several members spotting him regularly while
the better operator at the better station lost because he didn’t have
that support. Self spotting on SSB levels the playing field to a great
extent just like the RBN does on CW.
73…Stan, K5GO
On Mar 9, 2023, at 7:49 AM, K3TN via CQ-Contest
<cq-contest@contesting.com> wrote:
Self spotting obviously did not ruin the ARRL SSB, and it is
definitely one now legal way to increase score. But, it just doesn't
feel right. Below is what I sent to Bob W5OV in the ARRL contest forum
and directly to the CAC.
Context: Bud AA3B both independently put in similar but slightly
different feature requests to the N1MM Logger+ team to support comment
field labeling of self spots. Bud's implemented - you can now include
text in your self spot, Bud suggested "QRV" and a few were doing that.
Bud's goal was to make finding self spots more easily. The version
pushed out before the ARRL DX SSB includes Bud's suggestion.
Mine was rejected - I wanted a default value put in the text field so
I could choose to filter out self-spots. Right now the AR cluster
syntax doesn't support doing so. That would hurt me more than it would
hurt any self spotter, but, like not using history files, it is what
I'd like to do.
I'm going to check to see if there has been a feature request turn
Spot All S&P Qs by default, which I think is a much better solution.
73 John K3TN
Hi, Bob - I feel like self spotting goes against the values we've had
in contesting and contesting rules for many years.
In the past there have been little things, like MultiMulti ops not
being allowed to go home and work the MM from home. That was never
going to swing the results but it represented a value that QSOs should
be made the right way, kinda like fishing in a barrel is not an
acceptable norm in fishing.
I sent in comments that I was against it in HF non-SSB contests where
we already have skimmers doing a fine job of spotting stations large
and small. I'm not a big VHF contester so don't think my opinion
shouldn't count there - but I feel the same way there! Contesting and
skeds to me should not go together, nor should self-spotting.
The rules changed, so be it. I'd like a way in CW and RTTY contest for
me to not participate. I doubt that is a meaningful punishment to
anyone but me, and it let's me maintain my values. The other way would
be for me to only look at skimmer spots, which would punish me a bit
more!
I would have much, much, much rather see the CAC and members talk with
the contesting community to think of ways rules could be changed to
encourage more spotting in SSB contests - that is the real issue that
was trying to be addressed, since there is no shortage of spots in CW
and RTTY tests.
A feature request to N1MM to make the "Spot every S&P QSO" the default
would have been a simple step. The ARRL using RBN stats after the
contest to have "Top 10 Human Spotter" listings in the results, maybe
even offer $20 coffee cups to the top spotters, etc. Many other ways
to get more spots in SSB tests.
I've been a fan of leaping on most technology changes that have caused
controversy, like FT8 and remote operating. But to me this (and
history files that I choose not to use) are like post contest log
manipulation. A norm that I'd like to see N1MM Logger+ enable choice
in, just the way Logger+ was changed years ago to make post-contest
log manipulation harder (not impossible!).
73 John K3TN
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