[CQ-Contest] Spotting Reports

[David Robbins K1TTT]

> I'm too embarrassed to ask this on the reflector.
> 
> Can you explain the below spotting reports?  I imagine that this has to do
> with suspicious or perhaps unethical activity, but looking at the data I
> don't understand what it is that I'm supposed to be seeing.

I do have to admit I didn't put in the full explanation for the reports this
time, I was in a bit of a hurry.  But so everyone can learn from your
question I am sending this back to the reflector.  Don't worry, I'll bcc you
a direct copy so no one has to know...

The first one shows 'cheerleaders', stations who make a lot of spots for the
same dx station.  Ignore first cw2t who was spotting himself.  OK2SDE made
26 spots for UW4E, he must have made one other spot for someone else because
he had a total of 27 in the database, for a percentage of 96% for UW4E.
While cheerleading is not against the rules, unless the spotter happens to
also be an operator of the station being spotted, it can sometimes show
pre-arranged spotting plans, or other not quite ethical relationships.  This
report is sorted by the number of spots put in for that one dx station,
which may not always indicate unethical arrangements... for instance db2b
made 16 spots for ct9l, but put in 223 spots during the contest, that is not
unusual, especially if the spotted station is a multi op who is on cqing a
lot... you spot them each time you work them, probably 6 times, and then a
couple more times while tuning the bands and soon you have a dozen or more
spots if you do lots of spotting.  One thing that is interesting is that
IO9K shows up both in this report and the next one...

spotter	dx		Spots	total Pct
CW2T		CW2T		29	45	64
OK2SDE	UW4E		26	27	96
RK6AXY	RN6AH		25	28	89
KA2AEV	V26B		24	25	96
EA7HZ		EA7RU		23	35	65
N6TV		HQ3Z		18	82	21
S56P		S56P		18	18	100
IZ5MMQ	IQ5MS		18	18	100
IT9GCG	IO9K		17	19	89
VO1MP		VO1MP		16	18	88  (fake harrasment spots)
DL4FAY	DL2F		16	19	84
DB2B		CT9L		16	223	7
K4SV		TO5DX		16	16	100
ON6VI		OO6U		15	15	100
SP1DTG	SQ2AJN	15	16	93

The second one is the 'single spotter' report... this is a bit more
complicated.  I go through the 48 hour contest period and find spotters who
only made one spot in the whole period.  For contesters this is pretty rare,
so most real participants are removed.  It is possible that a dx hunter
would come on, work the vk9, or the vu7, spot them, then turn the radio
off... so lots of single spotters for rare dx is not unusual.  However, it
is pretty rare for there to be lots of individuals making one spot for a
'regular' contester and not spot anyone else the whole weekend.  So what
this shows is for each dx station, the total number of single spotter spots
that they got.  So vu7sj had a total of 210 spots in the 48 hours, 38 of
them were from single spotters.. so probably 38 dxers worked them for a new
one and turned off their radios.  of those 38 there were 4 of them that
spotted from the dxsummit web site.  The percentages after each one just
show what percentage of the total spots that worked out to... now 18%/1% for
vu7sj is 'normal' for a rare dx station.  The same with to5dx, and vk9dwx
who were both relatively rare dx.  SP3LPG had only 37 spots in the whole 48
hours, of which 27 were from single spotters, a VERY high number and
obviously a high percentage(72%) for a 'normal' station in a contest.  To
raise even more suspicion 26 of the 27 single spotter spots were from
dxsummit.  This is common with fake self spotters because you can put in any
callsign you want on the web form and there is no need to login to a cluster
node or change your callsign in a telnet program... so fake self spotters
use that mechanism a lot... so the 72%/70% becomes a tipoff to check the
dxsummit ip address logs.  For some reason there wasn't much data on SP3LPG
in the logs, but look at IO9K, which is more typical... spotter callsigns
from all over the world coming from a single ip address, which just happens
to be from an Italian isp.


DX		Total	All		DXSummit
VU7SJ		210	38(18%)	4(1%)
TO5DX		228	36(15%)	2(0%)
VK9DWX	174	28(16%)	3(1%)
SP3LPG	37	27(72%)	26(70%)


An excerpt from the suspicious spots for io9k:
Spotter	Freq	Comment
UX7QV		7052.5	cq ww			85.18.136.104
PA6Z		7052.5	cq ww			85.18.136.104
JE2BAY	7052.5	cq ww			85.18.136.104
LZ1NK		7052.5	cq ww			85.18.136.104
DL1LZ		7052.5	cq ww			85.18.136.104
JA1GYO	7052.5	cq contest		85.18.136.104
YO2FX		7052.5	cq contest		85.18.136.104
BY3FH		7052.5	cq contest		85.18.136.104

Note in the spots above they are all the exact same frequency, and the
comments are similar, this is a common 'mistake' when self spotting on
dxsummit since you can enter the data once and keep going 'back' and reusing
it.  

person:         ip registration service
address:        Via Caracciolo, 51
address:        20155 Milano MI
address:        Italy

David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net