Wow,
A lot of heat and rhetoric on this subject.
I personally think remote operation will grow, despite those who love the
status quo and want to live in the past.
For some unknown reason, people believe that remote operation leads to some
advantage, or is cheating, or something of the sort. This defies logic,
but who
ever said we humans think logically?
Here's another take on remote operating during contests:
There are lots of hams who travel to exotic places to operate contests.
That usually is pretty expensive operations. Those who do this all the
time are part of an exclusive, unnamed "club" and want to keep it that way.
However, I think ham radio is more democratic. If you have the resources
and ingenuity to build and operate a remote station, why not?
Wouldn't it be great to have a remote station in the Caribbean, where great
ops who don't have the financial resources to do so get the chance to do
so? Does a remote station have ANY advantage over a station manned
locally? In my opinion, no way. It would be much harder to compete for
obvious reasons. However, there is no reason to prevent it, as long as it
follows the rules of the country where the transmitter(s) are located.
For the same reason, old-time contest ops are against any rule changes and
want to place any new technology in a new category, as if it might upset
their record.
(I can imagine a lot of record holders are upset because SS will have new
multipliers in 2012... no fault of the ARRL!)
Someone, please tell me why you would want to put a remote station in it's
own category? Because it's "different"? Because maybe they are
"cheating/dishonest?" "It doesn't smell right." "They might break my
record." "We have never had this before." "It's not how we do things."
Are these valid arguments for a rule change?
CQ8X was rightly proud of his technical and operational achievement.
However, my friends, there are lots of other operators you work in
contests who are remote and you have no idea. They don't advertise the
fact. Sure, their operations probably may not cross DXCC borders. But
why should that artificial fact matter?
We need to innovate in this hobby, and especially in this sport. There
will always be old records to cherish and new records to be won.
By the way, the majority of ALL contests allow remote operation -- as they
do not explicitly exclude it. This goes for Multi-Op stations as well.
There is a great problem staffing multi stations. I see no reason why, if
all TX/RX equipment is at the same location, that the Operators could be
anywhere.
73, Gerry W1VE
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