[CQ-Contest] I can feel the heat! Fwoosh!

[Marty Tippin]

At 03:51 PM 3/27/01 -0500, Dave wrote:

<snip>
 >When the test was over, I imported the spots into a database,
 >and did some casual analysis. There were two ways in which
 >I found self spotters.. one was to see how many times a given
 >spot originator spotted any given callsign. Several calls
 >jump out immediately. To those clever enough to change the
 >originator callsign in the spot, you got nailed by the uniques
 >distribution, or in English, hey.. you get spotted way too often,
 >and how come 50 % or more of the stations spotting you spotted
 >you and only you ??

Be careful about assuming stations were self-spotting when all you have is
empirical evidence and no context within which to derive your conclusions.

It's entirely possible (and very likely) that some of the stations who
spotted only one or two other stations were acting completely within the
rules.


If you search your logs, you'll probably see several spots of AE9B and
PJ2WI by me, NW0L. I didn't participate in either operation, but I have an
interest in both (AE9B is a local friend, using a lot of my equipment
during the contest; PJ2WI was at the PJ2T contest station on Curacao, with
which I'm affiliated). In no case did either of those two stations spot
themselves - I got on the air, dialed around until I found them and made
the spot. Nobody asked me to do it; I did it of my own volition, trying to
be helpful.

Your implication above is that those stations were logged in with a
different callsign and spotting themselves. Does it happen? Probably. But I
caution you to be darn careful about assuming every instance you see is a
violation of the rules (which, by the way, don't really say much about
self-spotting).

-Marty NW0L
   martyt at pobox.com


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>From Rich K2WR" <k2wr at njdxa.org  Wed Mar 28 04:13:05 2001
From: Rich K2WR" <k2wr at njdxa.org (Rich K2WR)
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 23:13:05 -0500
Subject: [CQ-Contest] KL7RA needs advice
References: <019d01c0b645$b9932200$02f446c0 at snowfall.gcgo.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <00f901c0b73d$64204b60$e16bfea9 at 5j08601>


Rich:

Your friend said, "there is no incentive in the rules to be unassisted
except personal satisfaction."

Isn't that a pretty big exception?

Since the top unassisted scores routinely beat the top assisted scores, for
the most part the assisted entrants compete against each other, and so for
the unassisted entrants.  A very few people claim to be in the unassisted
category when they are not.  They have to live with themselves, and it does
not affect either of our lives.  If someone finishing #2 in unassisted were
beaten by someone who was cheating we would surely hear about it, but we
don't.

I know there seem to be a bunch of people on the reflector who lose a lot of
sleep over this.  I just don't understand it.

Rich K2WR


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