Soliciting QSOs via DX Cluster

[Neil Smith]

Following a comment from Tom K1KI about soliciting QSOs in contests by 
spotting yourself on the cluster, I wonder how other clusters around the 
world view such activities?  Usually I operate a laissez-faire policy and 
let everyone spot whatever they want, including themselves, but recently 
a number of stations have been going too far and putting out large 
numbers of self-spots.  When it was suggested to them that this was not 
in the spirit of the contest, they pointed out that "Use of Cluster" was 
allowed, and that was what they were doing.  Several more spots then 
appeared, in similar vein, but the station doing the spotting was 
different each time.  It appeared that what was in fact happening was 
that the contest station ops were using the DX/CALL crediting command, or 
the SET/ALIAS command in order to make more (but anonymous) self-spots!

Not wishing to censor the activities on the cluster, I allowed it to 
continue, but received a number of complaints from users.  Other sysops 
operate a policy of barring spots of the contest station after they have 
done one self-spot, so nobody else can spot them either, which seems 
rather drastic.

Some users seem to have used countermeasures, using the DX/CALL facility 
to make a spot which _appeared_ to be from the contest station, saying 
they were on a particular frequency when in fact they were somewhere else 
entirely!

As a cluster sysop, I have to make a moral judgement on this unless the 
rules can be made to encompass this rather oblique use of the facilities. 
What do you think about this, is it a problem? Should I bar spots of 
those who do this?  Should I let them get on with it?  Is it 
self-limiting in that users get irritated by it and positively avoid 
contacts with the self-spotters?

One step I have taken to prevent general abuse is to disable the DX/CALL 
facility on my cluster node!
Neil G4DBN sysop GB7YDX


>From k2mm at MasPar.COM (John Zapisek)  Sat Sep 17 23:22:19 1994
From: k2mm at MasPar.COM (John Zapisek) (John Zapisek)
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 94 15:22:19 PDT
Subject: CQP Freeware Via FTP
Message-ID: <9409172222.AA12145 at greylock.local>

Bob/ND1H asks:

> I've lost track of the CQP freeware. . . .  Which FTP site has it?
> Is there a new version this year?

Two CQP freeware programs -- one by Al/AD6E and another by Andy/AE6Y -- are
again available via anonymous FTP.  I got updated versions of both programs
from the authors at the NCCC meeting last night.  Last year's versions are
also still available.

The FTP site is maspar.maspar.com (192.84.231.1).  Log in as "anonymous" or
just "ftp"; give your e-mail address for the password.  The directories are
/pub/k2mm/cqp-ad6e and /pub/k2mm/cqp-ae6y.  The "cqp94..." versions are the
more recent:

    /pub/k2mm/cqp-ad6e:
    -r--r--r--  1 jzap     system      69970 Sep 17 14:34 cqp94.zip
    -r--r--r--  1 jzap     system      99742 Sep 17 14:34 cqp93.zip

    /pub/k2mm/cqp-ae6y:
    -r--r--r--  1 jzap     system     161429 Sep 17 14:44 cqp94dos.zip
    -r--r--r--  1 jzap     system     330695 Sep 17 14:44 cqp94win.zip
    -r--r--r--  1 jzap     system     156533 Sep 17 14:43 cqp93dos.zip
    -r--r--r--  1 jzap     system     326195 Sep 17 14:43 cqp93win.zip

AE6Y's programs is available in two versions -- one for DOS and another for
WINDOZE.  AE6Y's program also supports SS and WPX, while AD6E's focusses
only on CQP.

Because of its small size, I can a send UUENCODE'd version of AD6E's program
via e-mail.  Send a request to k2mm at maspar.com.  73.  --John/K2MM