[CQ-Contest] e QSL

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 01:48:56PM -0400, sawyered at earthlink.net wrote:
> Myself, I have been "on the other side" for over 20,000 Qs as FP0, C6, 
> PJ2, XX9, and 9M6.  In my opinion, the discussion about QSLing and 
> comparing it to contest logs is "apples and oranges".  The contest log 
> is a record that is judged on accuracy and is an inherent part of the 
> contesting sport.  If an exchange is off by a letter, it is deemed NIL, 
> and not eligible for credit, period.  

That's not exactly what's going on in contest log checking.  

Consider stations A and B make a QSO, station A gets everything correct, 
but station B busts the exchange of station A.  In every contest log 
checking process I know of, station A gets full credit for the contact.
Depending on the contest, station B either loses the QSO credit and 
possible multiplier, or loses the QSO credit and possible multiplier
_and_ suffers additional penalties.  But in no situation is station A
penalized for station B's copying error.  

To end up in a NIL situation, one station would have to have miscopied 
the other station's call so badly that the computer algorithms could not 
match them up - such as getting several characters in the callsign wrong.  
Which is not the situation that this thread was discussing.

>                                       Does it mean that the contact did 
> not take place? Possibly, but not certainly.  Someone could have made a 
> typo recording a valid QSO.  It should be deemed "not eligible" for 
> contest credit.

So, if you were to directly apply the contesting standard of log checking 
to DX logs, then if the DX station miscopied the other station's call
by, say, one letter, but the other stations has all the contact information
correct, perhaps the other station should still get "credit" for the 
contact...  

What if a log-checking algorithm similar to what we use in contests were 
added to LoTW (assuming it could run on the volume of QSOs in LoTW.)  Would
having a dispassionate computer algorithm do the matching consistently for 
everyone be OK?

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/