[CQ-Contest] Spotting

[David Robbins K1TTT]

> On Sat, 2006-12-23 at 08:49, David Robbins K1TTT wrote:
> > Alerting competitors is a side effect we pay for having world wide
> > connectivity on the network today.  Originally the networks were
> partitioned
> > and used to alert fellow club members of new multipliers to help them
> and
> > the club aggregate score.
> 
> But then, why not cut the link during contests?  (and limit the spots to
> your club's area)

For a while this was done successfully.  Then long range vhf spot suckers
were used to snoop on other club's networks from the fringes. now with most
nodes available via telnet its even easier to collect spots from everywhere
so we stopped trying to disconnect.  There is still some small advantage to
spotting what you can work because of geographical differences in
propagation.  i.e. what the YCCC spots on the low band may be harder to work
from further west or south, and the timing of greyline openings may mean our
spots aren't of that much use to other areas... and of course vice versa for
other bands and areas.


David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net