Back "in the good old days" of contesting, if you were not lucky enough to
have a VE8 or VE1 call you, you had to decide if you wanted to stop CQing
and go into S&P mode to find one. Knowing when and where to look for one
were "trade secrets" and sometimes you would find people asking a VE8 who
was on SSB for a QSO on CW (using CW - down below the 14200 USA band edge
of that time).
"Assisted" to me - means that someone - other than yourself - gave you
information during the contest that told you specifically where a missing
multiplier was. You were given help in spotting. This is exactly the
same information that you would be given if you were watching packet.
The reason that we don't allow packet in "unassisted" is that many of us
want to perserve a cateogry that rewards the operator for being able to
find the missing multipliers efficiently. We do not want this category
to be diluted with people getting their clean sweeps with "help" from
people on their frequency.
Put yourself in this position of a hypothetical case - you work long and
hard and you finally get within 15 QSOs of beating WP3R in the SS
contest. You spent 20 minutes of run time searching for a VO1 on 15
meters - and you found one - which cost you 20 QSOs. On the other hand,
WP3R had someone perform a random act of kindness and tell him where to
find his last multiplier - so that he didn't have to sacrifice any of
his run time to find it.
How has that person not assisted him in spotting?
Would you feel that this was fair?
Tree N6TR
tree@kkn.net
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