[CQ-Contest] Robots

[Nat Heatwole]

VE3XD wrote:

>> Most contests have relatively few categories and with a few instrings and
>> parses surely the software can make sense of a category

Don,
I'm curious, what do you mean by "most" and "relatively few"? At least among
the major contests (things like CQ WW, ARRL DX, WPX), contests which
presumably Cabrillo was originally intended for (those with a lot on
entrants), there are tons of different categories. They range from very
general, like "S0AB HP," to far more specific, like "SO 15m QRP Assisted,"
and everything in between. In the WPX contest it's possible to enter as "SO
20m LP Rookie Assisted Tribander/Single Element." With so many variables,
the number of categories tends to be very large. 

Even some of the less prominent contests have myriad categories. For
instance, my entry in this past summer's IOTA contest was "SOAB HP SSB World
24hr Unassisted." And while many minor contests do have only a handful of
categories, the majors - those contests that Cabrillo was presumably
invented for (although other contests have picked it up as well) - do not
usually fit that categorization.

73!
Nat WZ3AR