[CQ-Contest] Live audio during WW Phone

[Dave Pascoe]

km3t>> Sure, I can preserve the IP logs if that is of interest to those who
>> care about such things.  But put it in perspective...we will use this
>> to verify the "competitive stations" who somehow used a delayed audio
>> link over the internet to "work" *one* U.S. station.
>
wm5r> That's not how I see this being useful to another station.
>
> I can easily imagine a multiop in Virginia or Illinois or Florida or someplace
> having an "Internet" station where an op not on the air could be listening
> to Internet audio streams to hear what the W1s or W7s are working.  Want to
> make sure you don't miss an opening that K5ZD is working?  Who cares if the
> stream is 45 or 60 seconds delayed for that kind of strategic intelligence
> purpose?

You can't encourage ethical and civilized behavior by stomping out
technology.  Contesting, to a large extent, is a sport based on mutual
trust.  Anyone who wins by less than noble means is a loser.  The
community eventually learns who these people are.  And once you get
that reputation, it's pretty hard to earn back respect.

> Would that get you any more useful information than monitoring a packet
> cluster?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Packet cluster use is not forbidden for
> multiops or assisted single ops, but the use of remote receivers is
> forbidden for everyone.  If CQWW changed the rules such that the use of
> a remote receiver places a station in an assisted or multi category, that
> would be one thing, but the rules forbid it for _every_ station in the
> contest - so why invite people to use it?

Because you can't encourage ethical and civilized behavior by stomping
out technology.  There's already clunky technology out there
(www.dxtuners.com) to do this.  I would hope no serious competitor
would consider doing this.  But if they were that serious about
winning, what would stop them from putting their own receiver in a
remote location?  How do we know some stations aren't doing this now? 
We don't, and unless someone were to blow the whistle, we may never
know.  Should that make us uneasy?  Sure.

You can't encourage ethical and civilized behavior by stomping out
technology.  The technology will outlive us all.  But what truly
endures is the trust and admiration of our peers.  People who cheat
usually have a track record of other personality traits and suspicious
activities.  Does that make them guilty?  No.  But do their peers
respect them?  No.

> So, would _any_ station that submits a log who had listened to your audio
> stream have broken the rules?  I think so.

I would have to leave this to the various contest committees who
decide such things.  But from a purely practical point of view, this
is pretty much a no-op.  If you're really serious about it, send an
email to questions at cqww.com and to N1ND at the ARRL and pose the
question or propose a rule change.

My opinion is that our time would be much better spent getting new
people into the contesting sport, something this audio broadcast could
help to do.

> Packet should be banned, but that's a separate argument :-)

Finally something we agree on.  :-)   In part, anyway.

Dave KM3T