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Re: [CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ

To: "'Dick Green WC1M'" <wc1m73@gmail.com>, "'Neal Campbell'" <nealk3nc@gmail.com>, "'Rudy Bakalov'" <r_bakalov@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ
From: "Ed Sawyer" <sawyered@earthlink.net>
Reply-to: sawyered@earthlink.net
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:35:08 -0500
List-post: <mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
Dick, Great points here.  Thanks.

At my station, the only time I hear sidetone is when I am manually keying.  If 
its computer generated, there is no sidetine to hear - and I am often listening 
on the other radio and don't want the sidetone in the audio at all.

I believe it was clarified by the CQWW committee that it was not required to 
have the transmitted audio in the recording.

Ed  N1UR

-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Green WC1M [mailto:wc1m73@gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 2:38 PM
To: 'Neal Campbell'; 'Rudy Bakalov'
Cc: 'reflector cq-contest'; 'Ed Sawyer'
Subject: RE: [CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ

I'm OK with the rule. It's an extra step that requires a little technical 
proficiency and attention to detail, but I can't imagine it's a huge burden to 
ops who have built competitive stations and/or operate them well enough to get 
into the top-5. And it's nice to have a recording to review how you did under 
certain circumstances, such as which letters give you trouble when you're 
really tired.

I use Writelog, which has built-in compressed audio recording with indexing 
from the log (you can right-click on a QSO and hear the audio.) I record from a 
Y-cable on the headphone jack to a soundcard. Relatively easy to setup, though 
soundcards can be a pain to work with on Windows. 

That said, this past CQ WW CW I stumbled across a couple of "gotchas" when 
recording:

1. I started out thinking I might do a serious effort, so I setup the 
recording. At one point I took a sleep break and turned off the recording, 
hoping to save some disk space. But when I returned to the station I forgot to 
turn on the recording. Luckily, poor conditions and my state of mind caused me 
to end up doing less than 30 hours, so no harm. But I wonder what I would have 
done had I made the top 5. In retrospect, I realize that it may not have been 
necessary to turn off the recording. I think just turning the AF Gain to zero 
might have done the trick, depending on how the compression algorithm works. At 
any rate, it's necessary to periodically check to make sure the recording is 
going. Also, I have to remember to restart the recording if I have to reboot 
Writelog. There's a setting that automatically initiates it on startup, but you 
can imagine how that can cause unintended results between contests if I forget 
to turn it off!

2. I always turn down the sidetone volume on my run radio as low as possible. 
This allows me to focus more attention on the S&P radio during CQs and cuts 
down on fatigue. Though I can hear my transmissions (barely), they aren't 
audible on the recording. I couldn't find a setting where my sidetone was 
audible on the recording but not annoying/fatiguing to me, and there's no way 
to get the sidetone on the recording without my hearing it (well, I can think 
of a way to do it with an external keyer or mic amp and an audio mixer, but 
would rather avoid that.) I don't know the exact policy, but I suspect the more 
important track is the S&P radio, on which I use full sidetone volume. Does the 
rule that requires logging *exactly* what's sent and received mean the sidetone 
has to be audible on the run radio too? Does anyone know? Can someone from the 
committee weigh in on this?

73, Dick WC1M

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal Campbell [mailto:nealk3nc@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 11:28 PM
To: Rudy Bakalov <r_bakalov@yahoo.com>
Cc: reflector cq-contest <cq-contest@contesting.com>; Ed Sawyer 
<sawyered@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ

It is an unintended consequence of years of reflector bashing about the 
'rampant cheating' going on all the time. This is the most common topic of this 
reflector. Now, the committee has your attention, they tighten up verification 
and start bouncing logs out of competition for not following the rules.

Now everyone is pissed that they are DQ'ing logs.

This seems to be a forum looking to be unhappy.


Neal Campbell

Abroham Neal Software
www.abrohamnealsoftware.com



See components used in our computers at:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/abrohamnealllc




On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 8:41 PM, Rudy Bakalov via CQ-Contest < 
cq-contest@contesting.com> wrote:

> So if a person is DQ'd, what happens to the next person on the list? 
> In this case Top 5 could not provide a recording and now the former 
> Top 6 becomes Top 5; is he/she expected to provide a recording? How 
> far down the list does the requirement go?
> Rudy N2WQ
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest@contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>


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