I don't have a dog in this hunt, I haven't used RHR but reading some
of the comments got me to thinking that things seem to progress on a
logical plane; If you control your radio from your computer say with
N1MM during a contest or use one of the SDR radios with software
guiding the radio, are you not running your radio remotely?
If one wants to say it is OK to use N1MM or any other software to
control your radio if it's inside your house then you are agreeing
that distance from the rig itself is acceptable, the disagreement
then is to define how much distance is too much. I'm sure there are
many purists who feel using computers ruined contesting and surely
there are those who feel computers ruined the essence of DXCC.
Obviously achieving DXCC has changed as anyone doing so for years
understands. When I made my first 100, all was done by coming on the
DX on my own, some guys got calls from a phone tree but I had no tree
I was part of. Then there came packet and Bulletin boards. Later
Internet Relay Chatrooms & later came the internet with spotting
networks. With today's radios, internet DSP and improved Rx
technology, it's obviously far easier today to work DXCC than ever
before. How many of us today wait for our tube receivers to warm up
before listening? It's simply not the same and won't be the same
again.
So to me, I take the grumbling I'm hearing being more like sour
grapes from those who paid a lot of sweat and failures to get the
eventual successes they earned after years of hard work. The idea of
other hams using available technology to do what they took years to
do is offensive and to them, seen as cheapening the goal.
Honestly, if you were a millionaire back when or today and wanted to
build a shack and antenna farm to be better than 99.99% of the guys
out there, you could do it all along. The rest of us couldn't do it
and envied the big guns, got angry at them for dining at the DX table
before the rest of us could go after the leftovers. It's always been
"unfair" to the little guy, always will be, that's life.
To me, if a signal comes from anywhere in the continental USA, it's a
USA contact. If it comes from one island or the other in Hawaii, it's
a KH6 contact. I personally don't care how the person makes the
contact. As to DX calling from one country and pretending to be at
their home QTH, there have always been fatuous liars and cheats, that
too is human nature. Those people are to be pitied, they know what
their illegal QSO is worth and what their illegal DXCC credit is
worth, some people want letters associated with their name and they
don't care how they get them. IMHO they should get called for that
transgression, That's life too.
MY DXCC chase is my joy, I don't gauge it by anyone else's
expectations any more than they give a rats patoot about my opinion.
My 2 cents.
73,
Gary
KA1J
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