[CQ-Contest] Get Rid of the Assisted Category

[Dave Lawley]

Yes we've done this one many times before but I get worried when I see 
the sort of posting from Red K0LUZ.

Suppose in the next major contest I'm in my shack, ready to go. In the 
next room I have set up a number of receivers, connected to receiving 
antennas. I invite some of my friends around and their job is to spend 
the contest period tuning the bands. Any time they find an 'interesting' 
station which they think might be a mult or of interest to me for some 
other reason, they write the callsign and frequency down on a piece of 
paper for me and come into the shack and put it on a pile in front of 
me. Would anyone seriously believe that makes mine a single operator entry?

Packet cluster assistance is very similar, though there are many more 
people contributing spots and the spots go to anyone who wants them. But 
the critical point that separates it from all the other 'technology' is 
that the help is coming from other individuals in real time, during the 
contest.

There is a choice in CQWW whether to operate SO or SOA, but DARC have 
taken away my choice for WAE. I love the QTC feature but I don't feel 
simply annotating non-assisted entries in the overall listing is 
anything like good enough, so I don't support that contest any more and 
neither would I support the 9A contest, or any other event which fails 
to recognise that packet cluster assistance means that more than one 
person is doing the operating.

Dave G4BUO