[CQ-Contest] beating a dead horse (was: contest ethics)

[Kelly Taylor]

A previous correspondent, in a message about infrequent IDing during a contest, wrote:

To beat the dead horse...how do we attract new hams when our house is so
dirty??

I don't think we need to beat a dead horse, but I think we could get off our high one.

It seems to me that the problem stations are the ones who go on and on for tens of minutes at a time without IDing. But what are you going to do? ("Hang on to yer hat, Martha, there's gonna be a lynchin'.")

I think to interpret legislation so restrictively as to suggest that someone who doesn't ID EVERY QSO needs to be whipped makes us look anal. Like the geek who goes around telling people they jaywalked, and well, donchya know, it's illegal. Of course, the ultimate in geekdom would be for him to videotape examples of such wanton lawlessness.

Yes, technically, jaywalking is illegal in many areas. Do we want to take cops off the homicide squad to crack down on jaywalkers? Does a high proportion of jaywalkers affect a city's ability to attract new residents? Would an anti-jaywalking police state make a city any more attractive?

Yes, some people may let a QSO or two go by without actually saying their callsign (though the people they worked know who they are, and the guy at the FCC monitoring station in Maryland knows who they are, and the guy about to drop in his callsign knows who they are...). But is it really a capital offense? Should we be building a stake to burn him at? Doesn't Riley Hollingsworth have enough to worry about without having to check all the connections on his electric chair? 

I think people really need to lighten up a bit. Shit happens in contests. Some of it is significant, a lot of it isn't. Some is deliberate, some just happens.

If something matters, let's make an issue of it. A federal case, even. If something really doesn't affect the price of tea in China (or anything else, for that matter) then just shrug it off and move on.

Come. Be a ham radio operator. Have your kneecaps broken at the slightest infraction.

Wow, that's a sales pitch.

kelly 
ve4xt


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