[CQ-Contest] Growing New Contesters with LOTW - suddenly it's

[Pete Smith]

At 09:06 PM 5/27/2008, Alfred Frugoli wrote:
>Granted, this doesn't address the problem that Pete is trying to get 
>around.  While I agree with Pete's philosophy, I just don't see that 
>happening quickly.  ARRL has invested a lot in the current 
>system.  Dumping one of its major "founding philosophies" isn't going to 
>be done without considerable thought and deliberation.


I think that what I'm suggesting falls well short of destroying LOTW's 
security and credibility.  It's always been a lot more likely that a Romeo 
would claim to be somewhere he wasn't, than that any given operator would 
falsify both his own log and the corroborating logs in order to acquire 
DXCC credits he wasn't entitled to.

When you add the element of a cheater's having to submit the multiple bogus 
logs to a major contest sponsor, who will be making the logs public, the 
scenario becomes vanishingly improbable.  All it takes is one person to 
blow the whistle - "I know that 7Q7AA was on home leave in England during 
the contest, so he couldn't have made the QSO."  The contest sponsors look 
for the one station that worked him, start checking his other QSOs, and 
then hang him from the nearest yardarm.

I'm hoping that there is some creative thinking going on at ARRL.  They 
have a big problem with DXCC processing, and a recurrent need for 
operations like LOTW and awards to pay for themselves.  Adding one more 
person to the job of checking paper QSLs is a fundamentally inadequate 
step, as W5VX said.  At most, accepting verified QSOs from a major contest 
sponsor - even from its own Contest department - would amount to a limited 
and justifiable exception to the normal security criteria.  If they can 
address this problem, get additional revenue, save DXers lots of money in 
the process, and also stimulate contest activity, it's hard for me to see 
the downside.

73, Pete N4ZR