[CQ-Contest] cheating with packet

[Sandy Taylor]

I certainly don't disagree with any of the sentiment expressed by George or
anyone else advocating the continuation of an 'unassisted' class.

I do, however, note with interest two contradictory sentiments, not
necessarily by the same person:

1. Packet is not an advantage: if you're chasing spots, you're not winning.
This is often borne out in results.
2. If we eliminate the distinction, those not running packet will be at a
disadvantage.

How can they both be true?

I do, however, have a problem with the idea that some kind of log analysis
can be used to determine cheating. In the 10 meter contest, only because I
had NOTHING to do, radio-wise, (no sunspots, no 10 meter contest for us
VE4s), I watched K1TTT's Telnet node for spots. I noticed several stations
spotted multiple times by different operators over the course of a short
period of time, say five minutes (there is only so much white noise a body
can listen to!). (One station in an Italian protectorate was spotted many,
many times by the same station. Self-spotting? I digress...)

What that suggests to me is that there isn't a direct, verifiable link
between the emergence of a spot, the working of the spotted station and the
evidence of cheating. 

With multiple spots for the same station, the odds that any number of
stations will innocently work the spotted station within a period of being
spotted is quite high.

This kind of analysis seems to fly in the face of what we know to be
justice: better a 100 guilty men go free than one innocent person be jailed.
Innocent till proven guilty. That kind of thing.

An important consideration for any attempt to crack down is the desired
resolution: do we care if someone is in 10,356th place instead of 10,378th?
Or should the added scrutiny be applied to those logs where the results are
meaningful in some way (Top 10 overall, Top 10 DX, Top 10 Asia, etc.) It
seems to me that if we think results take too much time now...

The pressure to do something must fall to the sponsors, with boycotts of
contests if needed. Sometimes, voting with your feet one year is the only
way to fix things for the next year.

Otherwise, we're just going to be going back and forth on this issue until
the stars fall from the sky.

Or we could just accept that the point of contesting is to have fun in the
doing.

73, Kelly
ve4xt








-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of George Fremin III
Sent: December-12-07 5:00 PM
To: Yuri VE3DZ
Cc: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] cheating with packet

On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 02:08:26PM -0500, Yuri VE3DZ wrote:
> I don't like Dx Cluster, but the reality is - like it or not - almost
> everyone is using it nowadays, one way or another. I mean 99.9 % of the
HAM
> stations have the capability of using Dx Cluster today.
> So, why not just allow it for all categories, like it was done for WAE or
> Russian DX long time ago?
> 
> What are we afraid of here?

I do not think it is fear.  It is that I do not find it as
much fun to do the contest as assisted and if everyone is
in the assisted category than I have to make the choice of:

- Run packet and not have as much fun.
  
- Not run packet and be at a disadvantage.

So - I guess most would end up running packet and the non-packet way
of operating disappears.  That would sadden me.  I and others could
keep going on without packet and see how well we do against others
that use packet.  That has it's own appeal.  I already do this in
other contests - but usually it is that I am trying to achieve a
better score than the multi ops.

It would also mean that places that do not have a way to get packet at
all or easily are at a disadvantage.  (they do still exist - even if
it is only a few)

But as others have pointed out - why stop at packet?

Why have any categories at all - just put all the scores in a big
pile.  This is not a new idea - we could just list them in score order
from the M/M DX to the QRP/poor antenna stations.  We will just assume
that they all use high power and packet.

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


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