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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