[CQ-Contest] Another angle on assisted versus "being helped"

[Kelly Taylor]

Hi Tree,

While I can certainly agree with the thrust of what you're saying, a 
question:

It's 3 p.m. on Sunday and you hear in passing the J is five khz above you 
(say 14.285). He's the only guy you know of in NT on the air and his pileup 
is good enough that he stays on that same frequency for the remainder of the 
contest.

Your run peters out about an hour later. You tune down the band and snag a 
VO1, no. 79. You tune up the band picking off S&P hits hoping to find 
another frequency to try a run. You even detour to 40 for a bit and work a 
few more guys there.

You go up to 15 and see it's dead so you come back to 20. You tune around 
and hear VY1JA. No. 80.

You're just about to call him when it dawns on you: he's on the same 
frequency he was when the random act of kindness was visited upon you.

Do ya work 'im?

If yes, then at what point does the "assistance" expire?

If no, then is it really fair that your kind caller at 3 p.m. gets to deny 
you a sweep? (Evil devil's advocate mode on: couldn't that then become a 
strategy to deny rivals a sweep?)

73, kelly
ve4xt

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tree" <tree at kkn.net>
To: <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 12:47 PM
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Another angle on assisted versus "being helped"


>
> Back "in the good old days" of contesting, if you were not lucky enough to
> have a VE8 or VE1 call you, you had to decide if you wanted to stop CQing
> and go into S&P mode to find one.  Knowing when and where to look for one
> were "trade secrets" and sometimes you would find people asking a VE8 who
> was on SSB for a QSO on CW (using CW - down below the 14200 USA band edge
> of that time).
>
> "Assisted" to me - means that someone - other than yourself - gave you
> information during the contest that told you specifically where a missing
> multiplier was.  You were given help in spotting.  This is exactly the
> same information that you would be given if you were watching packet.
>
> The reason that we don't allow packet in "unassisted" is that many of us
> want to perserve a cateogry that rewards the operator for being able to
> find the missing multipliers efficiently.  We do not want this category
> to be diluted with people getting their clean sweeps with "help" from
> people on their frequency.
>
> Put yourself in this position of a hypothetical case - you work long and
> hard and you finally get within 15 QSOs of beating WP3R in the SS
> contest.  You spent 20 minutes of run time searching for a VO1 on 15
> meters - and you found one - which cost you 20 QSOs.  On the other hand,
> WP3R had someone perform a random act of kindness and tell him where to
> find his last multiplier - so that he didn't have to sacrifice any of
> his run time to find it.
>
> How has that person not assisted him in spotting?
>
> Would you feel that this was fair?
>
> Tree N6TR
> tree at kkn.net
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