Interesting discussion on the survey part II. Some confusion is obvious. Try
this:
1. All uniques are NOT busted (or bad) callsigns, though statistically, many
are.
2. Not all busted (or bad) calls are uniques.
3. Some busted calls are uniques
4. Some uniques are busted
A unique in your log which is successfully cross-checked to another log (using
established
parameters), will be identified in the LC as a busted / bad call and it will be
treated as such
in terms of scoring.
Currently, uniques which are in your log which cannot be cross-checked, may or
may not be
identified in LC as a busted / bad call, depending on the quality of the call
(determined by LC
s/w). EG: if you log F79XA23, it is clearly a unique (and busted) call. There
would be zero
chance of "cross-checking" that to a good call, but it still fails as a valid
calls and is treated
as such.
If a Unique cannot be categorized as as "busted" call (we did not find in the
other guy's log, same
date, ~time, same band, etc), you currently get to keep it. We do not assume
it is bad/busted,
although statistically, it might be.
The bigger question, at least for me, is DOES IT MATTER?
Almost everybody who is in the top 10 or 20 of their (competitive) category
works all
categories of calls (good, bad, unique, etc.). And believe it or not, the
percentage of
calls that remain as uniques, per log is very, very small (usually under 1%).
The exception to rule includes guys who are "rare DX" (or zones). If a lot of
guys need
it for a new band/mode or, as they say in DXing parlance, an ATNO, then guys
will turn on
their radio and work JUST HIM (her). It is not impossible and DOES happen.
But those are
outlier cases and easy to "figure out."
How likely is it for a guy in NA or EU to work a genuine unique - not very. Is
it possible - yes.
If a contest sponsor removes all uniques, ala WRTC at least one year....maybe
more, then the
scores might be cleaner for the majority of entrants (certainly most of NA and
EU, but not all).
This raises at least 2 issues:
1. Historically, this has never been done.
2. According to the survey, some guys, especially in North America, are going
to feel cheated.
And an offshoot of that is that there is a 100% (certainty) chance that
SOMEBODY is going
to produce a QSL card for a QSO that was removed as a Unique. Very bad PR for
the sponsor.
When I did an actual study of this in CQWW many years ago (pre-Randy Surveys),
I found almost
100% "no change" in order of finish. It other words, it just didn't matter if
Uniques were left in or
taken out. The one change I recall too place at something position of finish
#156. So the guy who
finished 156 was now in position 157. Yawn.
So, faced with a choice of removing uniques and creating "issues" with the
entrants versus doing
nothing and having essentially zero impact on order of finish, what would you,
as the contest
sponsor, do? <grin>
The last piece not yet discussed are "excessive" uniques in a log. That is
either the sign of
a poor operator (new guy? language issue on SSB?) or intentional cheating (log
padding).
As we found out last year, there are other ways to pad your log without
resorting to creating
unique calls. Excessive rate of uniques is definitely a flag for further
scrutiny to the log.
With SDR, it is easy to go back and figure out what happened and then take
appropriate action.
Hope this helps,
de Doug KR2Q
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