[CQ-Contest] The irony of Operating Time [was: Logging Time [was: Contesting Time Calculation]]

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 05:56:14PM -0500, Ed K1EP wrote:
> At 1/6/2006 04:11 PM, Kenneth E. Harker wrote:
> 
> 
> >We've also had discussions on this reflector before about the ethics 
> >of listening to the bands in the hour before a contest officially
> >starts and building up a bandmap.  It's obviously difficult for 
> >contest sponsors to regulate behavior outside of the official time
> >period for the contest, but I share the opinion of many others that
> >this is an unethical, unsportsmanlike practice.
> 
> So to make the analogy to car racing, practice laps in the days leading to the race and warmup laps prior to the start are unsportsman?   In the Tour de France, don't the cyclists take a ride in the morning?  Don't they drive the course before riding it that day?  Well, maybe only the real competitive ones.   Don't baseball players take batting practice and fielding practice before a game?  Is that unethical?  I don't really see too much wrong in warming up the bands before a contest.   You can't regulate what happens before a contest.  How far before a contest do you have to go?  What if I were operating two contests that day?  How do I erase my band and propagation knowledge from the first one before starting the second?  Next thing you know, there will be little jars that we will have to fill...

If you are populating a bandmap with the express intention of aiding your 
score in a contest, you are (IMHO) operating the contest.*  And if you are 
operating the contest before the official start, you are gaining an unfair
advantage.  You should not start operating the contest until the official
start of the contest.

*I see this as very different from preparing for a contest.  Preparation
could include familiarizing oneself with propagation, making sure your
radio transmits, your audio sounds good, etc.  But, actually filling in a 
bandmap to my mind is operating the contest, not preparing for it.

This is, as I mentioned, a terribly difficult thing to regulate.

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/