[CQ-Contest] Using ON4KST-chat

[Zack Widup]

Either I'm daffy, or a lot of other people seem to be having a hard time 
grasping basic concepts.

My idea is - if you are somehow receiving data from ANOTHER live operator 
in real-time during the contest, you're not a single operator.  You're 
either assisted or multi-op. Packet, chat rooms, telephone calls, text 
messages, etc. - during the contest period, these are either illegal by 
some rules or place you in a different category than single operator.

Using any tools that are not coming from a living person in real time 
do not place you in these categories.  Looking at sked sheets made BEFORE 
the contest, looking at operating tools that do not directly give you a 
shot at a specific QSO with another station (propagation charts, Hepburn 
forecast, callsign databases, super check partial, etc. etc.) still leave 
you as a Single-Op.

Skeds made before the contest guarantee nothing.  In one VHF contest I 
stupidly made the mistake of making a sked for 1830Z, half an hour after 
contest start.  I didn't get set up at my portable site until 1930Z. I 
eventually stumbled across the station I'd made the sked with, on the 
air.

Am I all wet? Does this maks sense or not?

73, Zack W9SZ

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Stefan Pfeiffer wrote:

> Where (exactly) to draw the line?
>
> Is using a grey line display cheating? Is using a beam direction map cheating? Is
> using a callsign database cheating? Is using a feature like "suspect zones" in
> software cheating? Obviously, some level of "cheating" seems to be "socially
> accepted". The tolerated level differs from one to one, but there is a limit.
>
> Finally, the contest sponsor has to decide. Unfortunately, "unsportmanlike
> behaviour" is not sharply defined at all, everyone defines that in a slightly
> different way. Only solution seems to be to define unwanted behaviour as far as
> possible by the contest sponsor, but unfortunately, the ingeniousity of the people
> reading the rules is much greater than the writers of the rules ever thought of,
> so there will be "holes" forever, i fear. The most bullet-proof rule could be like
> "unassisted = no more than a logging PC without any outgoing connections, no
> mobile phones, ..." and "assissted = anything more than unassisted, as long as no
> exchanges are transferred". Fine grained rules like "DX-Cluster = yes, but no
> selfspots; Chatrooms = No, Instant Messengers = Yes, but...; Telephone =...; Using
> qrz.com for state check=No" and so on lead nowhere, imho.
>
> Having learned how easy it is to set up remote controlled RXes over the internet,
> i second the fear of Mari, S56A, about that topic, for example.
>
> Vy 73 es 55 de Stefan, DL1ELY
>
> Peter Voelpel schrieb:
> > Why do you say "we" if you mean I?
> > For me all that you decribe it is nothing else then cheating if one is
> > taking advantage of other means then the radio to get qsos
> >
> > 73
> > Peter