Fellow NCCC member AL, AD6E, wrote:
>This sort of thing cannot be put on the backs of contest sponsors. They are
>unsung heroes as is and don't need any more grief. How could they possibly
>monitor everyone for such infraction? It's not practical. Those who engage
>in poor operating practices wind up with lower scores just naturally.
I was being tongue-in-cheek about actually having on-air monitors to DQ
people on the spot. That would not be practical.
However, there is a way to substantially reduce the great number of
Unnecessary AGN? repeat requests that eat up people's time.
When Contest sponsors indicate a callsign is to be part of an exchange, they
do NOT allow the creative freedom for a Sender to make up his/her own. It
must be the officially licensed call.
When Contest sponsors of domestic contests require a US State and VE
Province Mult as part of the exchange, they do NOT allow creative freedom
for a Sender to make up his/her own idea of what these are. For example, CF
for California is not legal. MY for Maine is also a DQ.
In the CQ WW, participants are NOT allowed to make up their own Zone numbers
- they must use an establish STANDARD based upon QTH.
When Contest sponsors fail to step in and do what most certainly can REDUCE
the number of off-the-wall dysfunctional cut number options (and resulting
CONFUSION), the fact is that a few selfish CQ/RUN stations will continue to
eat up valuable time from too many other players in the game. Life is too
short for this kind of crap.
Most major contest log processing is done by automated robot.
Each station is supposed to submit a log which contains what exchange they
sent, and what exchange was received.
The establishment of cut numbers STANDARD for the typical power levels of
100w, 1000w (nobody seems to give a rat's butt about the fact 1,000, K, or
KW are are ILLEGAL power statements being sent when 1,500w is the actual
used) makes this easy including any other power levels.
Exactly how much work is required for a Sponsor to include in the published
rules something like:
=======
ONLY the following cut numbers may be used for output power levels in an
exchange:
A = 1
K = 1,000 watts (KW) <---- why send the extra W letter anyway???
T = Zero
9 = 9
(Etc. if others AND with EXAMPLES like: 5TT = 500 watts)
NO other variations of cut numbers shall be allowed. Failure to adhere to
the above STANDARD will result in log DQ.
=======
Hmmm...that sure took a lot of time. *NOT*
If a Sender uses AK, XK, YK or whatever {creative}K for 1,000 watts, but the
Sponsor-Established published STANDARD for 1,000w is simply the letter K,
then the Sender's log rightfully gets DQ'd by the log Robot.. However, the
recipients of XK will NOT be penalized if they copied what was actually
sent. In other words, if the Sender sends XK but submits a log indicating
K, if there are 50, 100 or some number of other logs received indicating XK
was actually sent and copied, the Robot still DQ's the log for post-event
manipulation.
THIS WILL PUT A MAJOR STOP TO MOST OF THE CRAP, and provide more Contesting
Joy for the multitudes.
By having a cut number STANDARD included in the published rules, this
affords ALL players the opportunity to 'bone up' (program themselves, if
necessary) BEFORE the event vs. having to ask AGN? AGN? and/or try to figure
out what the sender may have been smoking before programming his/her
messages in the contest software.
Since current rules require adherence to legal callsign usage as well as
things like established Mult names (domestic contest example), then
adherence to use of a cut number STANDARD is logical, fair and reasonable.
This is not rocket science. Rather, it will bring CONSISTENCY AND ORDER.
Of course, there is also the new skunk in the woodpile matter to deal
with...those that want to skip the exchange and just send TU. That one
really needs to get nailed down by the Sponsors too.
73...
Rick, K6VVA
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