[CQ-Contest] Re: Dinged Good QSOs

[Trey Garlough]

> No.
>
> But you do bring up an interesting example.
>
> In baseball you try to pitch in the strike zone. (get the call
> exchange right)
>
> If you miss the strike zone by a little bit (miss the exchange) it
> is a ball.
>
> If you miss badly enough and hit the batter (miss the call) the
> batter gets on base without a hit.
>
> It seems to me that the rules in baseball were set up to penalize
> the pitcher for hitting the batter with a pitch in a severe enough
> manner that he will try to avoid hitting a batter with a pitch.

Baseball is a fine example.

In a given basball game there may be some 275 pitches thrown.  The
umpire may miscall a few balls as strikes and a few strikes as balls,
but for the most part umpires are very consistent in their calls.
Seldom does a single missed strike/ball call materially affect the
game, yet *everyone* experiences a blown strike/call many times in his
career.

In fact, players who argue a specific ball/strike call are ejected
from the game because they are missing the point.  No one ever reviews
the film after a game and asks the commissioner to change a specific
call from a ball to a strike retroactively, or vice versa, yet you
might be suprised how often this happens after a ham radio contest in
which 2,750,000 pitches are thrown.

When I started getting serious about Sweepstakes in the late 1970's,
the ARRL had extremely high standards for accuracy, but out of
necessity they were somewhat inconsistent.  What I mean is that since
all checking was done by hand, they had to pick and choose which logs
they were going to focus on, typically the guys in the top ten or
whatever.  I had plenty of QSOs removed from my logs.  The first few
times it happend I was mildly outraged, but it was a very interesting
learning experience.  I eventually realized that I wasn't being
singled out, but that I was finally generating scores big enough to
make my log "worth checking."

There is nothing new under the sun.  The log checking standards for SS
are still extremely high.  The only difference is that nowadays
*everyone* is being held to these high standards rather than the
"elite" top scoring stations, in other words even small logs are
"worth checking" nowadays..  As a result, the umpiring in Sweepstakes
today is extremely consistent for the first time in the contest's
history.  I think that history will show that many people are
presently going through the period of "mild outrage" and will
eventually find this to be an interesting learning experience.

Meanwhile, those people who truly want to see the system improve
should endeavor to give quality feedback to the various contest
sponsors rather than arguing balls and strikes.

--Trey, N5KO


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