[CQ-Contest] Cut numbers and Check

[Mark Beckwith]

> The rules say to send the year of your first license
> and that is a good practice.  Granted, what you send
> will not be validated by any scoring authority, but
> why not just use the year of your first license.


Yaa, Ken, but operators at club stations and multi-ops continue to have a 
dilemma because the answer is less cut-and-dried.  The SS exchange is based 
on the preamble of the ARRL Radiogram.  In that use, the check would be any 
one or two digit number (it was the number of words in the radiogram which 
would then be used as a simple "check" that you copied it all), generally 
less than 25 or 30 because if it was higher than that, it would be one long 
radiogram.

I like the "year first licensed" because (most of the time) it tells me a 
little tidbit of information about who you're sharing this 15 seconds of 
your life with.  My guess is the founders liked that too, but that's only my 
guess.  As a test of operator skill it really needs to only be a two digit 
number that is the same one used for the whole contest or else its 
instability reduces it's value to zero for the scoring crew.

Mark, N5OT