[CQ-Contest] Do you have to log QSO times?

Kenneth E. Harker kenharker at kenharker.com
Mon Nov 5 11:00:05 EST 2007


      As the organizer of the North American Collegiate Championship 
(http://www.collegiatechampionship.org/), which basically compares the 
Sweepstakes scores of college/university clubs, I sometimes get interesting
inquiries from neophyte contesters that want to put their college club 
on the air but do not have a contesting background themselves.  One club,
interested in getting on the air for the phone Sweepstakes this year, asked 
a particularly interesting question.

     To paraphrase it - they want to log on paper during the event, but 
they were concerned that when they typed in the QSOs on a computer later, 
how would the ARRL know that they had operated 24 hours or less?  Does that 
mean that they have to write down the QSO time for every contact?  Doing 
so seems like a lot of trouble and they were planning not to bother unless 
it proved necessary.

     My initial reaction was "of course you need to log the time for 
every QSO!"  I went to the ARRL contest rules to find where it says so.
The problem is that the rules are not as obvious on this point as they 
maybe should be.

http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2007/novss.html

1. says that stations "exchange QSO information", but is no more specific than
   that.
2. talks about the contest time and specifies what the minimum off-time 
   period is and how off-time will be calculated by software, etc.
4. talks about the exchange, but does not mention QSO time.
8. talks about the log entry process and references "ARRL entry forms" and
   "cabrillo formatted logs".  Both of those do include Time fields in them
   for every QSO, so I guess this is where the requirement to log the QSO time
   of each QSO works its way into the rules.

I don't see anything the Rules for HF Contests (which basically defines entry
categories) or the General Rules that makes the need to record the QSO time 
for each contact any more obvious.  I found it an interesting exercise to 
discover that something so basic is not as obviously stated in the rules as 
I thought it would be.

BTW, the requirement to record the band of operation seems to be treated 
similarly to the requirement to record QSO times.

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/



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