[CQ-Contest] A Plea to Cabrillo Contet Robot Writers

[Georgek5kg at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/7/2007 5:26:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
w2ev at yahoo.com writes:

You seem  to be taking this much too personally, Tree.  The issue has nothing 
to do  with the *excellent* work that BARC does (and continues to do).  It  
simply happens that BARC's Stu Perry event was the one that was referenced as  
an example of the problem with (1) parsing on "white space" rather than  
field-position and (2) requiring 599 reports when RST is not exchanged.   I've run 
across similar issues with other (non BARC) events, too (as I said  before).

Let's instead,  focus on the issue without regard as to  what the examples 
may be.  The issue is that of *requiring* electronic  submitters to send a log 
that includes artificial or synthesized  information.

Why is that a bad idea?  Because one never knows what  future decisions are 
made based on historic data.  There are those that  say, "No data is better 
than bad data".  In this case, packing a log wit  599's is outright "make 
believe" data.

Even so, it is BARC's  (EXCELLENT) event.  BARC will do what they need to in 
order to make the  job easier for themselves (and who can blame them?)  I am 
simply offering  a point of view that was not previously considered and stand 
by my plea that  robot writers review their code to assure that data is parsed 
by column so as  to avoid pitfalls as discussed in this thread.

In the mean time...thank  you BARC for a v-e-r-y fun contest!

Ev,  W2EV



I just have to finally weigh in on this.  Ev, it seems to me  that you are 
making an issue out of a non-issue, and should give it a  rest.
 
We all know that the RST system, and especially exchanging 59 or 599  in a 
contest is essentially meaningless.  Who cares about signal  report data in 
contest files, anyway?  Certainly not me, and it ain't worth  the bandwidth or 
brain cells to harp on it. 
 
FWIW, and nothing personal.
 
73, Geo...k5kg
 
George  Wagner, K5KG
941-312-9420
941-400-1960  cell