[CQ-Contest] Dupes and computer logs

[k8cc]

At 06:15 AM 9/7/00 -0400, Guy Olinger, K2AV wrote:
> > HOW DO I LEAVE IT IN THE LOG SO
> >
> > 1) It's clear to the contest committee that I have no intention of
> > claiming credit and I'm not criminally trying to sneak in a point.
> >
> > 2) W7WHY doesn't get penalized for claiming a nil QSO. After all he
> > didn't do anything wrong.

I think Guy has a very good point.  Some of the cases offered against his 
idea assume simple situations, like when you're running and in control of 
the frequency.  However, I think we'd all agree that there are situations, 
particularly when signals are weak, where one party or the other in the QSO 
might have gotten some info wrong and the other guy slips away.

I would like to suggest that one may to ID such QSOs in an electronic file 
would be to add a question mark to the callsign of the QSO.  The presence 
of the callsign would be an immediate flag to the logchecker that this QSO 
is not claimed by the entrant.  I think most of the major logging programs 
allow inserting a question mark into the call field for sending the 
exchange (ex: K8?C 599 OR) - it would be a simple code change to exclude 
such QSOs from the score total on the screen.

Logcheckers would grapple with how to use the "question marked" callsign 
(+1 check, partial, etc.) to check the other guys log.  I would also 
suggest this be added to the Cabrillo standard.

73


Dave/K8CC


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