All,
As the committee looking at optimizing the club's circle location goes
about their work - one thing has come to light which we should all
address now as individuals; which is reporting scores on behalf of the
club when we are eligible to do so, and not claiming the club when we
are ineligible.
Unfortunately, there are no good systems in place (yet) at nearly any of
the clubs, including ours, nor at the ARRL or at CQ to identify scores
that are inadvertently submitted on behalf of the club when they should
not be.
It turns out this is a really easy mistake to make. Most logging
software simply fills in your Cabrillo header with stored data for your
name, address, callsign and club. You have to take deliberate action to
delete the club if in a given contest you are ineligible. This is part
of the problem which caused the PVRC to recently return their SS gavel -
ineligible members were submitting scores for credit inadvertently.
Like PVRC, SECC has lots of members outside the ARRL and CQ circles.
Many contests have no geographic requirements, so our extended
membership lists SECC as their club in these contests. That's fine.
Meanwhile, I would like to ask everyone to be careful about which circle
requirements apply to which contests, and not claim the club when you
should not.
To help, the current club circle center is published on the club
website, and the rules are:
ARRL: 175 mile radius
CQ: 171 mile radius
Russian DX and WAE: 156 mile radius
CQ 160: NO geographic requirement
CQ WPX SSB and CQ WPX CW: "Local region" requirement - NOT spelled out
in miles. On this last one, I would suggest anyone within 1 or 2 states
of GA should feel free to credit the club - use common sense.
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