[CQ-Contest] Unique perspectives

[George Fremin III]

On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 11:50:01AM -0700, Jack Brindle wrote:
> But Tree, why is it bad?
> 
> The QSOs still have to be made. The exchanges have to be sent and  
> received correctly. Just because one's friends get on to give him,  
> but no one else, a QSO, doesn't necessarily make it bad thing.

Yes it does. 

As Tree pointed out - if someone gets 57 of their friends 
the air work him and only him this is just wrong.

> see in WRTC where the intent was to keep things very even between the  
> operators. but that is a very specialized contest. In a contest such  
> as Sweepstakes, where getting QSOs from non-participants has long  
> been promoted, it just doesn't make sense to eliminate this activity.  

I am glad you brought up sweepstakes - I happen to get on 
in that contest sometimes.

I work unique contacts in this contest - in fact I would say it might
be one of the contests where I work the most unique contacts (on SSB -
there are few uniques in a top ten CW log). I would have no problem
tossing out all the unique QSOs in SS.

You can see my LCR reports here:

http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/logs/logcheck/

In the 2005 contest I had about 20 unique contacts - several of these
are most likely broken callsigns that were not detected (another good
reason to toss the uniques) - the rest are folks I have talked through
the exchange.  If unique contacts are removed from all the logs I will
try to get the folks I talk through an exchange to go up the band and
make a few more contacts.


> By giving the operator a QSO, his friends had to learn what to send  
> and receive for the QSO to be valid. Or he had to take the time, in  
> the contest, to teach them. This is bad?
> 

Yes - because you need to also teach them to work more than one
contact.  What good is it to the heath of contest if they only 
make one contact - how is that helping out the overall contest?


> Getting folks on for contests, whether it be friends or casual ops,  
> educates others about contesting and what is needed to participate.  

Again, if they make one contact I do not see how that can 
be seen as 'getting them on for the contest' - when you teach
them about the contest you should also get them to make say 10 or 
more contacts.

> Perhaps the one fellow that I spend time talking into a QSO on _this_  
> contest might be a full-blown participant in the next contest. At the  
> least he knows a bit more about contesting and maybe why I am  
> participating.

He might be - tell him to work a few more folks - he stands a better
chance of learning about the contest if he gets to have more fun
making more contacts.

> punished for it. And yes, I can point to several instances over the  
> last few years where I have had perfectly good QSOs removed. Even  

Can you share these with us?


-- 
George Fremin III - K5TR
geoiii at kkn.net
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr