[CQ-Contest] Little old ladies changing tires

[Robert Naumann]

While I have a great desire to extinguish silly threads here on CQ-Contest,
I must comment in dissention with this alleged "real world logic".

The issue here is not receiving some information and doing something with
it; it is *how* you came to receive the information. Did you solicit it from
others in any way? Did you pre-arrange for someone to provide you with
additional information? If you answer no to these two questions, your
operation is not assisted.

Anything available to you on the air, *** without you soliciting it from
others in a pre-arranged or planned way***, should be fair game. The obvious
preclusions to this are already in the rules specifying connecting to
spotting networks etc.

Just like you can tune to 10MHz and listen to WWV as a single op to get an
idea of propagation and not be assisted, hearing something randomly
mentioned by someone else on the air during the contest should be considered
equivalent to WWV and not be considered any sort of assistance - in this
context - of being at risk of reclassifying your operation as assisted.

Perhaps the wording of all contest rules needs to clearly indicate that the
assisted activity must be planned, pre-arranged, thought out in advance,
coordinated with others, or something else meaning the same thing to remove
all possibility of classifying truly randomly gained information as an
assistance to your operation. Perhaps the category needs to be changed to
something like: Single OP with Planned Assistance.

The slippery slope comes in where you link the definition of assisted to
what you do after the information is gained from the proper place of what
you did **PRIOR** to getting the information. The distinction must be
focused on your intent - not your reaction. 

The example of announcing that you need VO1 is a great example that is
probably worthy of further discussion and debate. What is your intent here?
Have you planned with anyone else to locate a VO1? No. What if a VO1 calls
you based on one of these "directional" CQs? Would this be OK? I am inclined
to allow this as *NOT* being assisted since it is an activity you have
undertaken on your own, on the air, real-time, during the contest, and you
have not pre-arranged for it. Calling a directional CQ during a contest
should not be precluded for unassisted single ops.

Let's say you do need VO1, and you don't say anything about it. Then someone
works you during the last 5 minutes of the contest and randomly mentions
that VO1 is up 5 in case you need it - isn't this clearly different as there
is no intent or plan to extract or seek that information from anyone else?

Again, if someone tells you that the VO1 is up 5, what do you do? Ignore the
VO1 because you now know about it through no action of your own? Why not? I
see nothing wrong with this or unethical in any way. Why penalize your own
score for something you had nothing to do with and didn't ask for?

This is so binary to me I am struggling with how it is not commonly
understood.

73,

Bob W5OV

-----Original Message-----
From: Tree [mailto:tree at kkn.net] 
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 2:15 PM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Little old ladies changing tires


K4BEV writes:

> A little old lady has a flat tire...
> She changes the tire herself = Unassisted
> She calls AAA and they come out and change the tire = Assisted
> A Good Samaritan stops and changes the tire for her = Unassisted?
>  
> Using the above logic she must have been unassisted since she didn't ask
for 
> help, even though she accepted it.
> Using *real world logic*, if you accept assistance you are no longer  
> unassisted. 

It's this kind of common sense logic that often extinguishes some of the
more silly threads on CQ-CONTEST.  

Of course, you could talk about the tow truck driver who didn't see the 
old lady - and someone slows down and rolls down the window saying: 
"There is an old lady back a mile who needs a tire changed".  

If the information is acted on - the guy doesn't get to claim he found
her by himself.

So - that's the key.  Did you QSY and work the station based on that 
information?  

This is why even positioning yourself to get the information by telling 
the world you are looking for VO1 isn't a good idea.  Once someone tells
you about a station - it makes it hard to go work them even if you do find
them on your own.  

Just work the contest - maybe you will miss a mult.  I did in the SSCW.  
Life goes on.

Tree N6TR
"Crabby 40 meter HC8N Operator" (hence to be reduced to C4MHO).

PS: What about sending VV for "33" - anyone have a problem with that?
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