At 09:12 AM 7/1/98 -0400, you wrote:
>I'd disagree with this logic. A contest exists for a given period of time.
>I'm being judged on my abilities to copy callsigns DURING that time. Not
>based on all the other contests I operated. There is really no difference,
>IMHO.
What exactly are we testing in a radio contest? (I'll bet there are at
least ten different answers to this question!) It would seem to me an
important part of what's tested is what one's learned about operating a
station over the years. I didn't start learning how to copy Morse at the
beginning of the CW WW - CW is a skill I learned over years of practice.
Same with propagation. Should I be prohibited from using my CW or
opening-prediction skills (such as they are<g>) because they were acquired
before the contest?
If a weak station calls you on 80m sounding like "94UN", hasn't your years
of operating experience taught you the first two letters are probably "ON"?
Is it ethical to make that assumption & send "ON4UN? 59905", or do you need
to ignore what you learned before the contest & send "94UN 59905"? Is it
less ethical if you use a computer to jog your memory? If so, is it OK to
use a computer to send your CW for you?
>Say my SCP database is a worldwide QRZ CD-ROM. No one copied those
>callsigns over the air.
I would definitely say a QRZ CD-Rom is *not* an ethical source for SCP. Nor
are any of the pre-compiled SCP or TR Names databases commonly distributed
on the Internet. (flame suit on<g>) My names database is compiled from my
logs in past contests & my LogWin log of general QSOs - it does not use any
QSOs made by anyone but myself.
>Good thread, though.
Yes, it is! Scary thing is, how hard it is to come up with a hard, fast,
and obvious answer.
73 Doug
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