[CQ-Contest] busted calls

[Fred Laun K3ZO]

I found the following comments by Guy, K2AV, very instructive:

>I'm on forty meters, and as always happens, someone with the proverbial 
>wet noodle antenna is returning my CQ, in and out with QSB up and down, 
>copiable in between static crashes. For me it's usually an eastern EU 
>station with an obviously limited station.

>I think I've got him. Then I send his call, and he comes back sending 
>again, and I'm not sure I hear it the same. I go through the cycle again 
>several times. I have OK7XYZ written down twice and OK7XYG twice. THEN, 
>because I've been spending a lot of time with my 1500 watts NOT 
>transmitting, listening to try and get his call right, N$%##& with a 
>better location, a tower, a beam, and no manners, dumps on my frequency 
>and starts calling CQ. I can't keep the frequency...

Guy, it happens to me all the time too.  

For about the first 25 years of my now-47 years of continuous contesting, I
was bound and determined that no matter how weak the guy was, I WOULD dig
his call out of the mud come hell or high water.  It was a point of
personal pride to me.

Then I learned that what I was doing was a recipe for constantly being an
also-ran in major contests.  In my opinion, the HARDEST thing to learn in
contesting, the thing that really separates the men from the boys, is to
develop the ability to instantaneously decide whether a caller is worth
trying to copy or not, and to act accordingly in what might be termed a
cold-hearted fashion.   Indeed, when I mentioned this in a similar thread
two or three years ago, I was accused of being nasty to QRP'ers.  Not at
all!  I think my logs in the ARRL DX Contest will show that I work as many
QRP stations as anyone else.  But it IS a contest, after all, and there are
a few signals during a contest weekend, maybe only 15 or 20 out of 2000
that call you, where there's simply no percentage in trying to pull them
out, and the savvy contester won't even try.   

As far as the poor fellow missing out on a QSO for an award as a result,
frequently conditions will change and later in the contest I recognize that
the fellow who I'm now copying fine is obviously the fellow who was trying
to get through to me earlier without success.  Furthermore, the QRP'er
stands a much better chance of working stations he needs for awards during
a contest than he does during normal times, because there are so many more
stations on the air, the pile-ups are spread out more by the greater number
of rare stations on the air, and, let's admit it, contesters on the average
have better ears than the run-of-the-mill DX'er.  So just because one or
two can't hear him doesn't mean that he will give up;  there's still a lot
of stuff out there that he can get.

And yes if I bust a call and later get a QSL from the station in question I
WILL confirm it even though as far as the CQWW Committee is concerned (and
yes I am an advisor to the CQWW Committee, I admit) no QSO took place.
It's their contest and they make the rules.  I have different rules when it
comes to my own personal QSLing policy than the rules governing the contest
that I was operating in at the time.   

I keep very good QSLing records because I like QSLing, so I can detail what
these instances are.  Let's take the 1998 CQWW  contest because by now most
of the QSLs that are going to come in through the bureau have already come in.

What were these cases and how were they handled by the CQWW log checking
software?

1998 CQWW SSB Contest -- K3ZO log shows 2353 total QSOs:

        K3ZO copied      the real call was     CQWW Committee called it

Case #1    S53T               S52T               (not detected)

Case #2    SP9NQJ             SP9HQJ             Bad - penalty applied

Case #3    OZ1DUO             OK1DUO             Unique - no penalty

Case #4    DL4YMD             DL4YFE             Bad - penalty applied

So of the four cases where it was later proven that I got the call wrong,
penalties were applied in only 50% of the cases.  Therefore, while I lost
three extra QSOs for each QSO where the penalty was assessed, my EFFECTIVE
penalty for busted QSOs was 1.5 extra QSOs lost per ACTUAL error, since
penalties were not assessed in 50% of the cases.  I feel that this is
probably what is actually happening to most people.

73, Fred               


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