[CQ-Contest] Log checking questions

[Ron Notarius WN3VAW]

Steve,

Interesting question.

But the next question I would ask is "was there a SIGNAL on the air alleging
to be XY8Z on the air at that time?"

Sad to say, we have a tiny group of jokers who love to pull hoaxes like
that, especially in contests and DX pileups.  Now, let's assume (for the
sake of argument) that Slim or one of his cousins was actually QRV under
that call.  A small pileup ensues, and a small group of S&P stations hear
the pileup and joins in.  Only one station (unlikely as it may seem) posts a
packet spot.  (Why?  Who knows?  This is all speculation anyway.)  After a
small interval of time, Slim goes QRT.

In this scenario, the stations who innocently sent in their logs did nothing
wrong.

Now, take two.  If there was a signal on the air from a station with a
similar sounding call... say SY8Z on phone, or 4Y3Z on CW, or whatever one
letter/digit off you can think of... and that station WAS on the air, and
WAS on that frequency at that time... then I think you as a log checker have
some solid evidence of at least some SO stations running SOA, at least in
this one instance.  HOWEVER, I'd also keep in mind that some stations don't
ID as often as they should, and it is certainly possible that at least some
of the stations sending in their logs indeed did miscopy the call sent --
maybe they copied it from someone else, maybe the "XY8Z" op misspoke or
missent the call once in the heat of things...

Either way, and I'm sure we can all think of other possible scenarios, this
would raise a yellow "suspicious" flag.  And let me be clear:  Suspicious.
In the ideal world, I would, time available being a factor of course, check
further into some of these logs to see if any other similar coincidences
took place.

At some point, if there are similar coincidences in a log, I'd look further
into evidence of whether or not a station was on packet.  (And I'm sure
someone will say "yeah, right, who has the time.")  Beyond that... do you
notify the contest higher-ups that you might have a DQ situation?

Not a pleasant situation.

My club's local 2 meter simplex contest had a situation a few years ago
where one club station showed an inordinate number of multipliers from club
members... who allegedly ran around mobile, worked the club station from
each mult (zip code), and worked no one else.  None of these other stations
submitted a log, either.  Now, did the club station cook up a log, or just
get a bunch of members to inflate their log?  No hard proof either way...
and we adjusted the rules in the future to allow for the situation should it
ever arise again (we now will remove entries without penalty from log 'a'
when we can't get log 'b' to verify)... but at the time, we had to let it
go.  Irony is, they'd have won the club category anyway, even without the
padding (if that's what it was).  Makes you wonder if they really did cheat,
why did they go to all the bother?

73, ron wn3vaw


-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 13:25:14 -0500
From: Steve London <n2ic at arrl.net>
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Log checking questions
To: CQ Contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>

Put yourself in the shoes of a contest log-checker.

(All calls, contests, and times in this example are completely ficticious.)

In checking the logs, you notice that a number of stations claim to have
worked XY8Z between 1700-1730Z. No other QSO's with XY8Z occurred at
other times during the contest. You have personal knowledge that XY8Z
was not active in the contest. On a whim, you go to the DX Summit and
enter XY8Z in the spot database search. You find a single spot for XY8Z
at 1658Z. You also notice that many of the logs claiming to have worked
XY8Z were submitted as single-operator, without assistance.

Were those logs entered in the wrong category, either accidently or
maliciously ?  What would you do as contest log checker ?

73,
Steve, N2IC