Contesters:
This post begins a review of spots from the 2002 WPX SSB contest.
I started looking at spots earlier this year, after the ARRL DX
contests, when I noticed that someone had spotted under my call.
Reviewing the WPX spots, there are patterns, especially from
spots made via IRC/DX Summit.
In the WPX contest, 248 US calls made close to 450 spots via
IRC/DX Summit. 27 of those US calls making spots, or
10.8%, were by inactive calls.
Only a handful of other US inactives were found in thousands
of spots from other nodes and clusters.
DX inactives were much more difficult to determine, because
of conflicting information on the web. I have tried to
err on the side of caution when dealing with those numbers.
Basically the data presented here will show the number of
"unique" spotters - that is, calls that made only one spot
during the contest (and often had never spotted before.)
Along with unique calls, there are calls that are inactive.
Those calls aren't being busted and spotted, but rather the
inactive calls are doing the spotting.
Also, there are spots from calls which never use IRC/DX Summit
to make spots - but for some reason used that to make
a spot of one of these stations.
Sometimes, patterns quickly emerge - such as a string of
spots of the same station on the exact same frequency.
Also, certain letter combinations become obvious because
of their placement on the keyboard. Look for spotting
stations with strings like FGH, GTY, GTF, DRF, HYG and
combinations like that.
This data will not "prove" that a certain station has faked
spots - the spot data will speak for itself and should be
interpreted by everyone on their own. I don't make any
contest rules, nor do I enforce any. This is just what I found.
These spots could be legit, they could be done by a friend, or
even a foe of the station being spotted - all with or without
that station's knowledge.
I do hope people will take the time to calmly evaluate
the data and then draw their own conclusions.
All times are in GMT.
Jamie NS3T
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