[CQ-Contest] Domestic Contest Spots/Cheating

Mon Oct 17 14:58:47 EDT 2005

This isn't going to be any more scientific than earlier discussions buts
here's my experience.  Before I had SO2R capablility I would spend
significant portions of the contest calling CQ and staring out the window.
With nothing else to do while waiting for an answer, I would take notes
about what was happening.  Occasionally I would experience a furry of
answers, a mini-pileup, a bump in my rate.  I would conclude that I must
have been spotted to account for this and make note of the time.  After the
contest it was easy enough to do a spot search on DX Summit to see how many
times K0SR had been spotted.  What I found was that I might get spotted once
or twice over a whole contest. (Minnesota isn't exactly a rare multiplier
and I'm not going to be loud from here).  I see almost no correlation
between my rate and any "spots".  I've concluded that changes in propagation
could easily account for the changes in my rate especially on a marginal
band like 10 meters.

My conclusion was that there were other mechanisms available that would
affect my rate over short periods of time that didn't necessarily involve
the use of packet.

Respectfully,

Steve K0SR
----- Original Message -----
From: "N7MAL" <N7MAL at CITLINK.NET>
To: "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker at kenharker.com>; "Bob Naumann - W5OV"
<w5ov at w5ov.com>
Cc: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 12:47 AM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Domestic Contest Spots/Cheating

> I think the only thing I would add is if anyone wants to go through this
exercise I recommend using the SS for your model. First you can only work a
station once during the contest. If you see a pattern of your rate
increasing it is being increased by different groups of people, at different
times, and different bands. The other reason for using SS is because the
exchange is long and you're not going to be working 5 stations per minute.
It makes doing the math easier and it makes seeing the rate increase easier.
> If I have time this weekend(lotsa football)(go Notre Dame) I'll pull out a
one hour spread for each of the times I was spotted. 30 mins before and
through 30 mins after. Editing out the calls is a little time consuming but
manageable.
> 73
>
> MAL         N7MAL
> BULLHEAD CITY, AZ
> http://www.ctaz.com/~suzyq/N7mal.htm
> http://geocities.com/n7mal/
> Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
> It's already tomorrow in Australia
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Kenneth E. Harker
>   To: Bob Naumann - W5OV
>   Cc: cq-contest at contesting.com
>   Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 21:01
>   Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Domestic Contest Spots/Cheating
>
>
>   On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 08:42:46AM -0500, Bob Naumann - W5OV wrote:
>   > N7MAL said:
>   > > Here is the maximum you are going to get from me. STOP asking for
>   > more because it's not going to happen under any circumstances. <
>   >
>   > Mal,
>   >
>   > With all due respect, if you make a claim that there is rampant
>   > cheating, and cannot back it up, I think it is reasonable for one to
>   > conclude that you are not being honest.
>   >
>   > Your presumption that any single op that works you within minutes of a
>   > packet spot therefore must be cheating is simply not valid.
>
>   Mal never said that he could or would conclude that any particular
station
>   was cheating.  He merely said that the number of stations submitting
logs
>   as unassisted who worked him during periods immediately after he was
spotted
>   seemed higher than reasonable.
>
>   Let's consider what's reasonable...  Let's say that after being spotted,
>   your rate doubles for 10 minutes.  For agument's sake, let's say
pre-spot
>   rate was 48/hr and post-spot rate was around 90/hr.  So, in those ten
minutes,
>   you work roughly 15 stations instead of 8, for 7 additional stations.
Now,
>   of those 7 additional stations, at least a few probably also found you
>   by S&P, not by packet spot.  Why?  If you're only working stations at
>   48 per hour, you're calling CQ a lot and depending on your CQing style,
>   where you're beaming, etc., some station might be passing you by.  But
at
>   90/hr, there's less dead air, and stations from more places are likely
>   working you, making it that much easier for someone to figure out that
>   there's a station on frequency.  So, let's say 2 of those 7 were S&Pers,
>   for arguments' sake, and that the remaining 5 were attracted to you
through
>   the packet spot.  If those five submit logs, they should be submitting
>   them as either multis or assisted stations.  So 5 out of the 15 you work
>   in that time period is 33%.  Since not everyone submits logs, what you
>   need to do is look at those of the 15 who did submit logs and see if 33%
>   of them submitted as multis/assisted or not.  (And that's a little
>   conservative, as probably some of the stations that find you through
>   tuning are multis/assisted anyway.  The real percentage might be more
>   like 40% or more - but leave it at 33% for argument's sake.)
>
>   If, over time, and being spotted enough times to make this kind of
analysis
>   meaningful, you notice that fewer than 33% of those station who work you
>   within 10 minutes of a spot and submit logs in the contest are
submitting
>   as multis/assisted, then you might conclude that there's a problem.  In
>   particular, if instead of 33%, the percentage was close to the same as
the
>   percentage in general for the entire contest, that would also be telling
>   evidence of widespread cheating.  You'd still never be able to identify
a
>   particular cheater, but you could infer evidence of a problem.
>
>   I'd love to see Mal work through his logs in this manner and provide
>   some quantitative data, rather than just qualitative observations.  I
think
>   it would also be more interesting if it was done with logs from a
station
>   that gets spotted more often than Mal, but not so often that they are
>   being spotted constantly.
>
>   --
>   Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
>   kenharker at kenharker.com
>   http://www.kenharker.com/
>
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