Sorry for the typos on the original post..I was at work and being pulled many
different ways and have no opportunity to go back and proof-read everything
that I send out from there. It usually takes 3-4 hours to type up what I sent
out due to my attention being needed elsewhere at least a couple hundred times
in that time period and I usually just get frustrated and send out what I can,
as I can. At any rate, the topic is something that people that are affected by
it feel very strongly about and I am sure there is a better way of doing it or
rewriting the rules to make the "spirit" of the contest be reflected in the
"letter" of the rules. If there is something that can be exploited then there
will definitely be someone willing to do the exploiting. You don't have to
look any further than any other contest, athletic event, any form of political
system, any form of business...which pretty much boils down to anyone that's
into something for money, power, or credit.
One solution may be to have a sub-contest within a contest and if you have
someone independent and willing to sponsor that "sub-contest" you could also
submit your rover logs (and other station logs as check logs) to that entity
that can scrutinize the logs submitted to see if grid circling, circle jerking,
pack roving, and captive roving techniques were used to attain the claimed
score. Again, I am not a rover and don't have any desire to be, but I like
working rovers and would like to work more of them and I personally would have
no problem submitting a check log to a 2nd entity to help settle this issue and
there has got to be someone out there with the resources to pull something like
this off and that sponsor could get some publicity/advertising out of it too
and post all the logs submitted online for all eyes to see since that is
current issue at hand. I am still yet waiting for Santa Claus to exploit the
north pole with all the tremendously close gridsquares
if he can get some of his elves (also known as the Garland Grid Trotters {not
to be confused with the Harlem Globe Trotters}) to posse up and systematically
circle the pole on sleigh to slay the competition. Yes, it sounds foolish, but
it makes a point at exploitation and how just a few guys can team up, drive
around together as a team, have nearly or exclusively all the same bands as a
team, and exclusively work one another and win without ever really needing a
respectable station capable of working any distance (not that it can't) and
being completely and totally self-serving other than making a few qsos here and
there just to make it look more legit. You can do all this and still fall
within the "letter" of the rules, but not within the "spirit" of the contest.
Grid circling, pack roving, and captive roving sounds like it would be as
boring as heck! I can't imagine doing the exact same thing every year, going
through the motions, keeping up with the technicalities of circling at every
grid corner with the same stations over and over for 33 hours. Sounds about as
tough as a mall security guard working the night shift making his rounds every
night pushing a button or signing in at every checkpoint just to prove he was
there at a certain time and on schedule and having 5 other security guards
walking or driving directly behind him duplicating everything that he is doing
just seconds behind him. Sure, they are going though the motions but are they
accomplishing anything with all of them being in the same place at the same
time with their eyes on one another all the time playing follow the leader?
Now imagine them doing that with 10 handheld radios talking to one another and
to only one another and each guard talking on each
radio at each checkpoint within the mall once on each radio to every other
guard at each of the 3 closest checkpoints plus the one he is at himself. Once
the other shift of guards that doesn't play follow the leader and tries to keep
from having all their resources tied up all in one place hears about how the
night shift guards are doing tries to find out how the night shift guys are
getting away with such poor security practices tries to have the check logs and
a copy of all the radio traffic for the nightshift pulled, he runs into
resistance and no one will allow him to see how nightshift gets such high
numbers of checks done and supposedly has been talking about their checks all
night long...but he finally figures it out...all the security guards on night
shift never get out of sight of one another, they follow eachother as a team,
and you can't hear them on the radio log/recorder because they all have their
antennas off their radios as who needs an antenna when you
are within whispering distance. Needless to say, he is pretty upset when the
nightshift leader gets the "guard of the month" award, then the 4 other
nightshift guards all get the award on a rotating basis even though the guards
on the other shifts work just as hard but are spread out over a larger area
looking for problems to solve instead of looking at one another. The
nightshift guards never acknowledge what they do differently even though they
solve no problems and are never seen by the public like the other shifts do/are
and they insist that there is no reason why the other shifts show resentment or
curiosity as to why nightshift looks so good on paper but nowhere else and
there is no evidence that nightshift did anything all night long other than the
testimony/logs of their own and no outside sources to verify their story.
I hope the story was worth the time and gives the
circlers/captives/packers an idea of the resentment that they have encouraged
by exploitation of the rules.
Rusty
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