[CQ-Contest] Unique perspectives

[Tree]

Interesting debate about the uniques - but I would like to encourage people
to think about "the other side of the equation".

When I see comments like this:

> Having lost the Atlantic Division in SS a couple of years ago by a
> single QSO, I do firmly believe every QSO matters.

I feel like the person is looking at the situation with blinders on.

In the case when uniques are removed from your log - you need to understand
they are also removed from everyone's log. 

Let's say in this situation where you lost the Atlantic Division by ONE
QSO, let's say the guy who beat you has QSOs in his log from 57 members 
of his local club that didn't work anyone else in the contest.  True,
maybe these people all actually did get on the air and just work one guy,
but my experience tells me it is more likely that a few people got on the
air and "helped out".  

Would you want to lose a contest by one QSO in this situation?  

If you look at the WRTC report files, you can see the impact this had on the
"normal" stations and the impact it had on the others.  Here are the unique
percentages for five of the top claimed scores:

Call   Unique Percentage
PT5M   0.6%
PW5C   0.5%
PT5L   10.0%
PW5Y   0.6%
PW5X   0.6%

So - if we removed uniques from these logs, normal stations will lose the 
same 0.5 or 0.6% of their contacts.  Is that such a high price to pay for 
"protection" from a guy reading a list of callsigns to someone else? 

While loud stations do tend to work more uniques - in a world wide contest,
a loud station tends to work into areas where there are other stations that
work the same stations.  For example, while K7RAT on the west coast might be
loud enough to work a UN5 station on 80 meters, that same UN5 station will
show up in lots of logs from eastern Europe.  Unless a station only makes 
two or three QSOs in a contest, it is really hard for them not to show up
in two logs that are submitted.

After looking at this type of data for 20 some odd years, I honestly feel
there is enough abuse out there that contest results will be more fair with
a rule like this.  However, I also realize that there is enough emotion 
associated with it - that it will probably never happen.   Maybe someday,
with a few more case studies like this, we can come up with a better 
solution.

Think about "the other guy's log" when you lose by one QSO and wonder how
fair the competition was.  Would it be fairer with this rule?  Is the 
absolute score more important than the correct finish order?

73 Tree N6TR
tree at kkn.net