[CQ-Contest] The dupes?

[steve.root at culligan4water.com]

I'm usually in the camp that works the dupes and keeps on going, however in last weekend's ARRL 160 meter DX contest the number of dupes was astonishing. I had one VE3 call me seven different times. I had almost 90 dupes in my log before I finally started yelling ENOUGH ALREADY! At some point this does hurt my score....if a strong dupe covers up a weaker station that I haven't worked and he goes away, I lost a QSO because of this. I started to think that these guys were casual operators who had no idea who they had already worked and were waiting for me to say "QSO B4". Then I uploaded my log to LOTW and found several instances where the teh dupes show up in LOTW. Apparently they are computer savy enough to upload their logs but aren't able to see dupes. Sigh.....

73 Steve K0SR