[CQ-Contest] Log checking in CQWW

[Tonno Vahk]

Mike, this is not about one royal flush. This is about hitting sets or two
pairs at every hand through the tournament. You say that don't post here but
help organizers. Well, do you think it has not been done or attempted? Lot
of this effort is in vain. My exact question is: HOW CAN WE HELP THE
SPONSORS? It is clear that they have failed this year and failed badly. I
don't hold it against them as this is voluntary work and with limited
resources. Opposite to that, I deeply admire their will to keep this contest
going. But they obviously lack resources and they don't accept help. Any one
of us - experienced SO2R contesters - need about 5 minutes of look into 9A1A
log to have no question about how those multiplier numbers have achieved.
38/146 on 40m and comparable mult counts on other bands beating top assisted
stations and multi ops is unachievable by one operator without packet (even
BOH or TJ would not be able to come close) and looking into the log it all
comes clear pretty quickly without doubt. I am as sure in that as Toni and I
could take a day and prove it also on paper beyond any doubt.

We had a lot of hopes, big hopes this year that Committee starts to clean up
this mess and we see disqualifications. It has not happened. Having rotten
apples like 9A1A proudly in the top 5 in EU taking high points for WRTC is
very dissapointing to many contesters in EU and I absolutely agree with Toni
in his despair and I question the future of the contesting if it will
continue like that.

I can only propose that logs would be made public with detailed claimed
scores tables right after the log deadline! That would give community a
chance to point attention on possible violations. That is the only way we
can really help the sponsors. Do they want to be helped? I don't know.
Honestly I have lost the faith in them for now. There are packet cheaters on
top places in several categories. We have seen cheaters exposed without
doubt (working wrongly spotted calls etc), that has not helped to bring them
down.

For now until we can not do anything else, this reflector is the right place
and the ONLY place to apply peer pressure and this is exactly the only place
to post the extracts of the logs and discuss them. We see endless
discussions on irrelevant or unimportant topics compared to that like
posting to 3830. A lot of guys have suddenly a lot to they on those kind of
topics and engage into furious fights but when we get to something really
serious and fundamentally important to ensure the continuation of our hobby
people will hide their heads in the sand and the only reaction we get is
asking not to post the logs (which are public anyway) here or talk about
it...

73
tonno
es5tv

-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Michael Coslo
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 4:36 PM
To: CQ Contest
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Log checking in CQWW


On Sep 5, 2008, at 6:01 PM, Alfred Frugoli wrote:

> Why not?

Just on this list, we had a log posted, with some interesting  
inferences.

Public posting in and of itself is not the problem, it is what some  
people do with them.

I had an entrant who at one stage in the contest, the mullts were  
lining up for him in such a precise way that I became suspicious. One  
county after the other that he didn't already have just popped into  
the log. Sections too.

Now I could have just decided that this person was cheating. Maybe I  
could have posted it to a list like this one, saying "How is this  
possible?".

But I had the other logs, and I took a look through them. Guess what?  
The Op was NOT cheating. Just as a poker player can get the occasional  
royal flush, or 4 aces, this dude got really lucky. Good for him. Good  
for contesting. That will make a good story to tell fellow Ops. Good  
thing I didn't blab my suspicions, eh?


> Can I post my own log?

It's your log of course. If you did really well in the contest you  
could have it etched in marble! 8^)


> Can I post a link to someone's log instead of the actual log?

I think that making the logs public is a mistake. We are going to have  
innocent people accused of cheating. Especially heinous, is that the  
better a person does, the more people are going to try to prove them  
as cheating. Some times a person is just good.

> I just don't get all the worry about public logs, etc.  Isn't there  
> a piece of amateur radio about mentoring, and elmering, and helping  
> new folks get into the game?  With all this contesting pressure to  
> win and not cheat and to not reveal your secret strategy it's no  
> wonder we're an elete club of greying guys!


Who has pressure to win and cheat? The only pressure I see is to get  
better. This isn't NASCAR or some competition where there are large  
prizes at stake. This is just people and their radios.

Some of us, myself included, are perhaps a little old fashioned. I  
still do deals on a handshake. I still expect my Ham radio peers to be  
ladies and gentlemen until proven otherwise.

That doesn't mean that I am a wimp. My penalties for cheating are  
simple. Buh-bye, yer outa here.

But so many of these proposed strategies are like a person being  
assumed guilty from the get-go, and others disqualify a lot of Ops who  
have no crime other than operating in a fashion that isn't compatible  
(mobiles, remote sites, rovers)

I guess it boils down to killing the hobby by being too trusting, or  
killing it by strangulation, making it so oppressive that to  
participate, a person has to jump through so many hoops that they just  
decide to do something else that weekend.

I still say to people who want to expose corruption and whatever other  
evils there are in Amateur radio contesting to use their energies to  
help contesting. If sponsors had more people helping them, the results  
would be done more quickly, more accurately, and cheaters would be  
found and eliminated more easily.

I know it is a lot easier to complain than to do something about it, a  
whole world of difference between castigation and correction.

-73 de Mike N3LI -


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