While it is easy to blame the technology for many of the problems in
contesting. Spotting can be a contributing factor to many of the
problems we are seeing but education or lack of education and training
of the players is the root problem. We have more people playing than
ever before.
Jim Wrote:
"From my limited perspective, these are my observations of what packet,
spotting, skimmers have added to our beloved hobby:
1) diminished operating skills
2) stations don't know the call of the station they're calling
3) stations can't copy calls
4) stations don't know how to find DX
5) stations don't know the best way to break a pile-up, often leading to
incessant calling
6) stations bust the call, and spot this busted call - leading to DUPES
for the DX station, forcing the DX station to QSY
7) RBN is so efficient, it puts all the callers zero beat with one
another - and they don't know it (see 5, above)"
Everything in this list learned. How to break pileups, how to find dx,
when to look and where and why. This list of issues were a thing in the
70's and 80's except for the packet and RBN. Has that much really changed?
The technology didn't do any of this. The RBN, Clusters or skimmers are
not teaching new people. Who is? I am sure I did some really stupid
things as a 14 year old contester. Didn't we all when we started out?
I bet most of us had some pretty good teachers around. How about my
list of contesting elmers; W0UN(SK), K0RF, W0UA, N2IC, WB0IWL(SK),
W0CP, and many many many others in Colorado. Do new people have access
to resources like that? Do they even know where to look for help? Is
it obvious to new or not so new contesters where to get help?
I operated from V47 in the 80's and experienced the worst pileup
behavior attempting to work EU. The exact same things that happened
then still happen today. Packet had little influence on those pileups.
The spotting pileups are much bigger because we have more people in the
contests. I operated from V3 recently and people still call constantly
in pileups, it just is not from one main country anymore. That bad
behavior spread.
Have we done enough to get the masses trained up as good contesters? It
would seem that we have not done a great job with this, especially with
those that just participating and trying to have fun. How can we the
Contesting University or something like it to all contesters? Can we
use the internet more effectively to combat some of these issues above?
There does not seem to be one central depository for everything
contesting. Would such a thing help?
Lets not forgot the positives that have also come with these technologies.
Pointing out problems is the easy part. How about some solutions?
W0MU
On 4/19/2017 11:56 AM, Jeff Clarke wrote:
I've been a ham for a long time and most of you around my age can relate to
what I'm going to say.
Remember back when the operator had no outside assistance in a contest or
chasing DX? You had to tune the bands to find out where a band was open to or
find a DX station. I remember years ago reading articles by W9KNI about chasing
DX. What he wrote back then isn't even relevant in today's world. The
technology has taken that away. No need to understand anything about
propagation or even tune the bands (the hunt) because all you need to do today
is fire up the internet and point and click. That doesn't feel real challenging
to me.
Think of the negative consequences that spotting has on contesting and DXing .
Sure maybe it's convenient to click on a spot to work a station without having
to tune around the bands. But how can someone feel a sense of accomplishment
compared to when you do something on your own? It almost seems like catching
fish in a barrel.
Something I've observed over the past several years is that stations in rare
countries don't even bother to get on in DX contest anymore because of the
unruly pileups that occur when they are spotted. Remember all the rare African
stations you could work in the afternoon on 20 meters? They now seem to be
fewer in number.
Unfortunately spotting has changed contesting forever and there is no easy fix
to the problems that It causes. Plus it's not going away. It takes longer to
have the results published by CQ because of all the detective work they have to
do to expose cheaters. It's amazing to me they can do this with volunteers (BTW
who probably have real jobs too) and have them out within a year.
I'm afraid that the CQWW rules are starting to become too restrictive . What's
coming next? In the future are you going have to preregister your planned category?
Maybe the rules on spotting should be relaxed as many have suggested. It will level
the playing field for everyone when it comes to spotting.
This is all becoming too complicated. Like K1AR said contesting is supposed to
be FUN. How are we supposed to recruit newbies into our passion for contesting?
For someone new to contesting to read the commentary on this reflector why
bother? It's just to much of a hassle to do things like recording our contest
activity.
Jeff
Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid
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