The little feedback I received from my earlier posting was somewhat
inconclusive. My original question was whether as a cluster sysop, I
should take any action to prevent contest stations from spotting
themselves (or being spotted by friends).
Steve KO0U/4 tells me that there are various policies on the different
groups of clusters in the US East, but that on the majority the users are
left to spot what they want without censorship. In the UK, some sysops
are very firmly against self-spotting and use SET/DXNOK or SET/BADDX as
soon as the first self-spot arrives from a contester, but most take no
action.
A number of folks said that if a they saw a self-spot, they made a
deliberate decision to _avoid_ a contact with that station.
Peter ON6TT pointed out that the practice is a successful one for the
contest station he operates at, resulting in additional points. Peter
also uses all other legal ways to solicit qsos by ham radio that are
available, and suggested that in some quarters, there is a belief that in
HF contests, only HF should be used to find and work stations.
The general feeling was that self-spotting was allowed by the rules
because it is not forbidden, and therefore should be tolerated, but that
it was somehow not quite "right".
How do other sysops feel about this? What about operators at the big
multi-multis? Where should I draw the line? Do I let everyone spot
themselves once a minute? How about the ANNOUNCE messages saying
"DON'T WORK G9XXX, THEY ARE BEATING US, WE NEED THE POINTS MORE", or
"WE STILL NEED THE DAKOTAS, ANYONE HEARING THEM PSE ASK THEM TO CALL US"
Should we rely on the good taste of the self-spotters to keep the number
of spots and announces to a reasonable level? We could soon end up with
an add-on to CT that sends a self-spot every few minutes and on every QSY.
Now THERE's an idea!!
My feelings? I'll let anyone do anything on my cluster node so long as
it is legal, decent and doesn't impact too heavily on other users. If my
trunk links overload during a contest, then I get them running faster for
the next one. Is there any need for a rule change to encompass this use
of packet? What do you think?
Neil G4DBN sysop GB7YDX cluster, York, England
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