[CQ-Contest] logging & issues

[Tom Frenaye]

At 02:29 PM 10/27/2005, Paul O'Kane/EI5DI wrote:
>We know from this mailing-list that RST and zone are ignored by CQ for checking purposes. 

Rather than feeling safe about not copying the zone, feel uneasy.    

All we know is that CQ has apparently not checked the zone in recent years.   Things can change.

When I checked logs by hand at ARRL 25 years ago I learned more about checking each contest.  I'm sure the CQ checkers are learning a lot faster than I did with the ease of e-mail to pass along questions, and the large number of electronic logs to review.

The CQWW contest rules say to copy the zone.   Do that.   If a station sends the wrong zone the checkers will give probably you credit for the right one because they are pretty smart people.   If a station sends something that clearly isn't the right zone (serial number, power, age, etc), copy what was sent.   Those checking the logs generally understand about casual participants and try not to ding anyone for that.    If a station starts sending serial number then changes to send the zone, the checkers will understand that as well (some call it an "unstable exchange").

The log checking process should (and does) get better every year.   There are plenty of additional things that can be done in log checking and each year (or contest) the checkers do some new things.   One year they may look hard at packet, the next they may look at signal reports (what?!), the next it might be the 10-minute rules.   Most of these are things that can eventually get automated and done every time.

Remember, they didn't use to check for packet users either.

                     -- Tom

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