[CQ-Contest] Remote Site Contesting Rules

[Tree]

Interesting discussion about remote stations.  

I fully agree with the idea that as long as only the operator is moved out 
of the equation and all TX and RX stuff is done in the same place that there
is no conflict with the intent of the rules.

The Stew Perry contest actually added some clarification to this because we 
knew of at least one competitor who was using a remote RX station that was
about 60 km from his TX location.  

"All transmitting and receiving antennas used must be within 100 km of each 
other."

This allows the use of a remote station - as long as it wasn't too far from 
your TX station to have different propagation.  

In my current situation, I am very capable of transmitting with a good signal
on 160 meters, but as the urban growth starts to swallow up my QTH, it will 
be very difficult to have the same receiving performance I enjoy now during 
the next sunspot minimum.  It is very likely that I will invest in some kind
of remote receiving setup.  I have a prototype that I am using now out in the 
barn.  It is a K2 using the Ham Radio Deluxe software which runs on both 
sides of the internet connection and hooks up to the serial port on the 
radio and has a very nice user interface on the operator end.

I feel as long as this station is located in Oregon it will be okay for my
general DX QSOs.  When I work a DX station, they are still working 100 
percent Oregon - so it will count for WAS.  If I had a remote station on
the east coast, it would be a lot harder to say what state he really worked.

I may not be able to use the remote RX setup in all of the contests however,
which is really too bad - since it will enable me to work more of the 
weaker stations.

N6RT operated some of the ARRL DX CW contest using my station while he
was sitting home in Orange County.  The technology is here now to do this 
very easily (even without radios that have LAN connectors).  

Some small tweaks of the rules will probably be required as more of us 
start doing this.

Tree N6TR