[CQ-Contest] When is a QSO not a QSO?

[Paul J. Piercey]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com 
> [mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Paul O'Kane
> Sent: March 20, 2007 08:35
> To: CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> Subject: [CQ-Contest] When is a QSO not a QSO?
> 
> Was "Remote Site Contesting Rules - Getting out of hand".
> 
> > --- "Paul J. Piercey" <p.piercey at nl.rogers.com> wrote:
>  
> > My point is that when I make contact with a station, even in a 
> > contest, it's the operator that I am working, not the equipment.
> 
> Paul is right. Amateur radio, and contesting in particular, 
> is a point-to-point (single-point to single-point), person- 
> to-person, solely-RF-based technology.
> 
> Any deviation from this, regardless of how much fun or how 
> convenient or how technically advanced it may be, serves only 
> to dilute the achievement of completing the QSO.  Repeater 
> QSOs are an example of "dilution".
> 
> With sufficient dilution we are eventually reduced to the 
> level of EchoLink, Skype and cellphones - all great fun, all 
> highly technically advanced, but not amateur radio.
> 
> > --- "Ken Alexander" <k.alexander at rogers.com> wrote:
> 
> > Sorry, no sale Paul.  If I had a ham friend in KH6 who let 
> me operate 
> > his station remotely . . . At the end of the contest, if 
> you'd worked 
> > me you would have worked KH6, not VE3.
> 
> Ken is right in that Paul would have worked KH6.  But, 
> ultimately, he is wrong because it's not a valid amateur 
> radio QSO - it's a step towards EchoLink or Skype. 
> 
> There's a fundamental issue here - at what stage does a "QSO" 
> become something else?  I suggest, for contesting purposes, 
> it's when the operator(s), and all equipment and antennas, 
> are not physically located within a circle of 500 metres diameter.
> 
> 73,
> Paul EI5DI

Thanks, Paul. I can live with that.

I would even be more lenient in allowing that any remote operation has to be
confined to a call area (for contests like SS, it would be confined to areas
used as multipliers). It's pretty broad but satisfies my concern that the
person (me, for example, as a VO1) is not misrepresenting him/herself as
being in another location when they are physically not. When you work me,
you work a VO1 in VO1. It satisfies the issues that ops with these insane
restrictions placed upon how they utilize their own property have. If I
lived in an apartment building but owned a property 100 miles away (still in
VO1) then I can set up a station there and go to it when I want to or
operate it remotely when I want to do that. No problem.

But, like you say, if the object of the exercise is to just talk to people
regardless of where they are, then use Echolink, Skype, or the telephone. I
got involved with amateur radio to talk to people directly in distant lands
as opposed to neighbours who have radios in foreign lands. Point to point
communications is the key.

As far as I'm concerned, the guys who are championing the DX remote stations
are simply looking for a problem to solve with their solution. Either that
or they are manufacturing a problem where none now exists.

73 -- Paul VO1HE