[CQ-Contest] TWO entries in ONE Contest

[John Devoldere ON4UN]

Interesting...

For the first time in the ARRL CW contest we planned to do two monoband
jobs from the same station, my station. Two different operators:DL2CC
operating 40, and ON4WW operating 80. It was an interesting challenge to
suppress the harmonic of the 80 m signal enough to be able to operate 40
without handicap. The state of the art technology and available technical
knowledge makes it possible to do monoband efforts from a single shack
without much interference. This is exactly what the MM stations doe. No
difference! This is of course NOT with one (single) operator. But that is
not necessary. In most countries the call is connected to a station
licence, so various operators can operate one and the same station. 

This is what we did in the ARRL CW and Phone contests. We also had agreed
that neither operator would help the other in any way.

By our regulations in this country, we are forced to use the OT-call fro
these contests, if we want to run high power. So we had to use one and the
same call on both bands, otherwise we probabaly would have used different
calls on the diffefernt bands. 

As a matter of fact, I, myself, operated a few hours on 20 during Sunday
afternoon, to kill boredom. I also used the same call. So we now had 3 logs
to submit.

I checked with ARRL how I had to do this, and the first reaction was that I
was not allowed to do different single band entries with one call, and
would have to send in one real log + two check logs. I read and re-read the
rules, and could find find anywehere anyhting that does not permit this. I
submitted my argumentation, and ARRL came back to their decision, and wrote
me it was OK, but that they would change the rules for next year, so that
it would be impossible in the future. It would be OK for us to do several
monobands, fromn one place, from one shack, provided we use different
calls. I asked what was the "rationale" for this. The answer was: "I
believe the reason for the rule (and rules can be quite arbitrary -- not
having a good reason) is exactly to prevent a multioperator station from
submitting multiple single band scores.  Past rules clearly prohibited
that...".

I can fully understand that ARRL wants to prevent multi-multi stations, who
did a poor job, or who broke down on one or more bands, to submit single
band entries. BUT IN ESSENCE, THESE MULTI-STATIONS CANNOT DO THAT, because
a multi station is definitely (BY DEFINITION) not a unassisted affort. They
all use clusters, and a bunch of other help at the station (several ops
etc). They are simply excluded from entering a single band log, because
there is no single band assisted category!  

If tomorrow W3LPL or K3LR would suddenly submit 4 or 5 single band logs,
nobody would believe these were all unassisted efforts, unless it would
maybe have been announced prior to the contest. In any case if Frank or Tim
ever wanted to organize such an effort, they could use different calls.

The problem is that in some countries, e.g. in Belgium we are forced to use
one single call, because we get the high-power contest license with one
single call for one station (location).

I therefore would like to ask the contest community to express their views
on this issue to Chuck Hutchinson, K8CH at ARRL. I am of course looking for
support to make it also possible in the future to do single band efforts
like during the past two ARRL Contest weekends.

Maybe the modified rules should say that "several single band efforts from
one station need to be done with different calls, UNLESS LOCAL RULES
PROHIBIT THIS. IN THIS CASE THESE SINGLE BAND ENTRIES SHOULD BE ANNOUNCED
TO THE ARRL CONTEST MANAGER BEFOREHAND, AND HIS OK SHOULD BE OBTAINED."

It should indeed be impossible for multi-stations to change to single band
entries "during" the contest. 

73

John Devoldere, ON4UN




At 10:22 2/11/98 +0300, you wrote:
>TWO ENTRIES IN ONE CONTEST ?
>
>Hello Contesters!
>
>Could you imagine: somebody seriously works as a single operator on 40m
>and 80m, or on 20m and 40m, or on 80m and 160m bands during one Contest?
>I think that is impossible. Could you imagine: somebody seriously works
>as a single operator on 10m and 160m, or on 10m and all bands during
>one Contest? I guess that might be.
>
>The story. It was in 1996. I was going to take part in the Ukrainian DX
>Contest in SO 15m MIX category. The contest begins at 12:00 UTC.I started
>to work on 21MHz, but because of bad conditions and low contest activity
>my contest was finished in a couple of hours.I thought: what I have to do?
>I decided to continue my job on the other bands,first of all to support the
>contest activity getting fun and I came back to 15m next morning. Finally
>I sent two logs to the contest committÅe, one for 15m entry and another
>for all bands entry. What did happen later? Then I got the Results,I was
>surprised:I was placed first in SO 15m MIX category and 3rd in SO MB MIX
>category! My friends contesters noticed me something like these: " You
>should not send two entries in one contest", "You must send one log for
>your entry and another one as a check-log". Mmm...I guess they are right.
>But,if me or someone else have any real ability to make two entries in
>one contest, so what is actually wrong ?
>
>73! Vlad  UT1IA
>(RB5IM formerly)
>e-mail: gord at kron.donetsk.ua
>
>
>--
>CQ-Contest on WWW:        http://www.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
>Administrative requests:  cq-contest-REQUEST at contesting.com
>
>
***************************************************************
*            John Devoldere, ON4UN, AA4OI, OT8T               *
*             e-mail: john.devoldere at innet.be                 *
*                address: Poelstraat 215                      *  
*                         B9820 Merelbele                     * 
*                         Belgium                             *
*                 mailing addres: P.O.Box 41                  *  
*                                 B9000 Gent,                 *
*                                 Belgium                     *
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