[CQ-Contest] Recording

[Kelly Taylor]

One fellow asked why recording a contest is so bad.

I'm not sure it's "so bad," but I have a few reasons to dislike the
practice. I don't mean to disparage anybody, but...

To me, contesting is to Amateur Radio what the Pro Tour is to golf. Unlike
your average Sunday duffer, on the Tour there are no mulligans, no practice
shots. If you swing and miss, it's still a stroke. If you hit the rough,
tough. If it takes you three strokes to get out of a sand trap, too bad, so
sad. You can't take multiple tries to get it on the fairway. At the end of
the tournament, you don't get to go back and take shots over again.

You do get to keep notes and to review your scorecard to ensure what you
turn in is actually what you shot.

Now, here's where the analogy diverges: on the Tour, there are no casual
players. Everybody plays to win. In contesting, there are many casual
players. Only a handful rise to the level of "contendas." Those who are
casual often say they're just playing against themselves or they're in it
for fun. So to those, it really shouldn't matter, IMHO, if they miss the odd
QSO. On the other hand, if you are a "contenda" a missed QSO can mean the
difference between winning and losing.

To me, that's life. Just like on the Tour, where missing one fairway can
mean the difference between winning and running up, you take your best shot
and live with the results.

Tape recording a contest for posterity is one thing: taping a contest with
the intent of going back to fix missed calls to gain an advantage strikes me
as wanting to go back on Monday and re-play the fifth hole at Augusta. They
won't let you do that on the Tour and there aren't a lot of big-time
contesters who think it's fair either.

Winning a contest, or winning a golf tournament, isn't about making QSOs the
fastest or hitting the longest drive. It's not about fixing mistakes after
it's over, it's about not making them in the first place or digging yourself
out of a hole during regulation time.

It's about being the best. About balancing accuracy and speed to have the
most clean QSOs once the adjudication process is over.

And I won't even mention that a tape recording is no guarantee. At the end
of the day, you can roll out all the tape you want showing that what you
heard is what you logged. But if you're not in his log, it doesn't matter
one whit what you heard.

Those are my thoughts. I welcome disagreement.

73, kelly
ve4xt