[CQ-Contest] QSO Penalties

[K3BU@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/15/2005 6:32:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
kenharker at kenharker.com writes:

>>The 3 QSO penalty rule makes perfect sense to me.  Anything else encourages 
guessing whenever there is uncertainty.  Consider the following options:

0 QSO penalty: If in doubt, it is _always_ to your advantage to guess at a 
  callsign or exchange element.  If you get it wrong, you are no worse off 
  then if you had (correctly) not logged the contact.  On the other hand, 
  there is always the chance that you can get it correct and gain points
  you did not truly earn.<<


Yea, I sit in the contest and do "guessing" right?
Common' guys, lets get real here. You don't pay three times your speeding 
ticket fine, or go to jail three times for doing whatever. Just screwy "ham" 
logic with this 3 QSO penalty.

It is simple as that: you either get it right and claim/get the points, or 
not, in which case you lose the points that you did not get right. Any 
"explanation" why it should be retained, is just twisted logic.

This three QSO penalty I believe is carry over from the days when you had to 
check your logs for dupes, you missed some, you were penalized for it 3 more 
times. I can swallow that, you have control over the process and no reason to 
claim dupes (which was pain for log checkers to verify).

I tried to illustrate with my examples of (-N) QSOs, that it was not some 
kind of cheating or guessing, but I got hit with "3x penalties".

What the heck is the guessing game? Combinations of 26 letters of alphabet 
and numbers up to 5000? Like I have a choice of two and get lucky? Gimme a break!

Let's get real here and get rid of that rule.
It just invites somebody picking on station, working it with bunch of calls, 
send the log with just few calls and cause massive penalty to the "enemy".

Very simple - bad call, bad exchange, delete the QSO and don't count it. 
Radical idea? Not in non-ham life.

73  Yuri, K3BU