[CQ-Contest] Packett can cheapen the competitor in all of us if we let it...

[Jim White, K4OJ]

This is not just directed at WW3S but his comments have caused me to end 
my silence on this thread - what N6TJ has said is, in my humble opinion, 
very true and I think that we as competitors need to take a look at how 
packet has to some extent cheapened our image as contesters - rather 
than being guys who rise to the top of the heap over time as we 
accumulate knowledge we are users of technology first and understanding 
it second!  This is a common problem in current society with only the 
purist of professors mandating their pupils learn it the olde fashioned 
way first before simply learning to use a machine to generate output... 
I had a drafting instructor in an architectural course who once said to 
one very young student that he had to learn to actually draw the 
assignment and that no he could not simply do his homework on his CAD 
program... by drawing it his mind would see the subtle implications of 
the intersections of building materials whereas the CAD package while 
producing crisp lines did not require him to LEARN how it all fit 
together nearly as well as drawing it would. (was this the worlds 
longest sentence?)

Packet usage has done this - it makes it easy to do an average job... it 
does not teach us to do a great job by forcing our minds to grow.


WW3S opines:

"Is it that they list all the
single ops(even with packet) in one category, even though the packet users
are so noted?"




You bet it is different... lets say you invite a couple hundred of your 
contest buddies over to your station and they all tune the bands while 
you are running... whenever they hear something juicy they make up a 3 X 
5 card with the call and frequency and forward them to another guy who 
takes all those 3 X 5 cards and lines them up by frequency.... he then 
passes the stack to another guy who throws away all the cards that list 
a guy you have already worked on that band... then the remaining cards 
are given to you to dial in and work - all your ducks/mults in a row... 
BETTER yet and more like what is happening when you use a logging 
program, a guy sitting next to you turns the second vfo to the frequency 
of the new mult and you just switch vfos and you are on the frequency of 
the new guy... you have NOT tuned your radio... you have not displayed 
any knowledge of propagation and unique band openings... This is the 
packett assisted single op entrant - with his army of helpers allowing 
him to do nothing other than push function keys on his logging software 
and run up a good score... THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS A SINGLE SET OF GRAY 
CELLS WHICH THANKS TO PRACTICE AND KNOWLEDGE OF RADIO PROPAGATION 
KNOWING WHEN TO STOP RUNNING AND START LOOKING FOR S&P QSOs!



  Is that really any different than listing all the SO2R guys
( and gals) with the SO1R? How much (percentage) do you think the second
radio adds? Using the top ten or twenty US scores in CQWW, if some used
packet, would the places change much? What do you perceive to be more of an
advantage, packet or a second radio? If packet users should be a separate
category, why not 2 radio guys?"


Because we are measuring competition of individuals and not stations. 
If it was simply us comparing stations then we could set up windows of 
time where everyone's signal would be sent and received and the winner 
would be the one loudest most often... computers could do the whole thing.

An SO2R entrant has seen that he spends a good part of the contest (if 
he is operating SO 1 R doing absolutely nothing... with memory keyers 
and computers generating our CQs the whole time they are calling CQ for 
us we are sitting there doing pretty much so nothing... BUT... now, 
since we are in an age where multi-tasking in business is commonplace, 
it is commonplace for us to think of ways of increasing our operating 
productivity.  This CQing time can be spent making sure your computer is 
sending your call right by listening to it ( a complete waste - many ops 
either turn their sidetone completely off or down to almost nothing ) 
and decide to instead use that time to listen on another band for band 
opening and multipliers.  This time is now valuable time - lets say (for 
argument sake) there is a ten second repeat to a CQ form its start to 
its restart... if you get no answer to your CQ there will be close to 20 
seconds you wasted, then thirty if no answer to the second CQ, etc...

You convert that time into valuable time by listening to another band 
and when something juicy shows up you can be there to snag it! The SO2R 
operator has taken one man and increased his ability to make points by 
training his mind to juggle the audio from two different radios.

This is hard to do but when learned he is still one operator, not a room 
full of operators - which is what packet is.

I see a world of difference between the two... the high scoring SO2R guy 
is such by virtue of his re-inventing his contesting self into a better 
operator able to digest and react to more data being input into this one 
set of gray cells.

I am not saying that packet is the work of Satan, it does serve to 
enhance the scores of the contest expeditions and the average Joe Ham - 
Joe you see is not as interested in competing he is interested in 
scoring more points and having fun.  The SO2R guy when the dust settles 
at 00Z on Sunday catches his breath and not only realizes then what a 
huge score he has just made but also realizes he had a fun time partly 
due to his sticking it out and forcing himself to learn the skill... HE, 
SIR, FEELS LIKE A MILLION DOLLARS!  In the parlance of the times: He 
Kicked Ass!

Before anyone flames me - I do respect the packet assisted competitors 
as a breed unto themselves - and competition when it is assisted versus 
assisted guys is something which I feel should be separate from the 
unassisted guys, the DARC who sponsors WAE, and some other contest 
sponsors, do not feel the same way.  Choreographing when to work the guy 
on the second rig and not messing up ones run rhythm is an honorable 
skill.

Face it, we all know that pointing and shooting packet callouts is 
shooting fish in a barrel... perfecting SO2R is like Hemingway's 
fisherman in the Old Man In The Sea.