[CQ-Contest] Erroneous Ten Minute Violations

[Michael Coslo]

On Jul 28, 2009, at 4:13 PM, Dave - AB7E wrote:

>
> Yeah, I had the same thought myself.  My logger (N1MM) uses the  
> computer clock, which is regularly updated online and is rarely off  
> by even a few seconds, but if the log checking process looks at  
> other logs to verify the time it could obviously cause problems.  It  
> almost seems like this would be such an obvious opportunity for  
> false errors that it wouldn't be the case, but who knows.  False ten  
> minute violations were common last year and made a lot of people  
> quite angry so I'm really surprised it didn't get fixed, whatever  
> the cause was.
> test

Side notes:

clocks are set all over the place, and even internet computer updating  
is not 100 percent reliable. I had a time server that kept (re)setting  
my clock incorrectly. So any determination of time off has to come  
from within that particular log, not what other logs are saying.

When checking logs, it is found that times vary all over the place.  
I've seen Local time instead of UTC, I've seen wrong time zone instead  
of UTC. Otherwise 10 minutes difference in settings is not all that  
unusual. Amazing, but true.

The log checkers or software need to be adjustable for the amount of  
deviation that is acceptable, and woe onto the adjudicator who sets it  
too strictly.

While some arguments might be made that the individual Op has to have  
every single duck in order, as long as I can make the correlation  
between logs, that is if the Op is consistently off by 5 minutes, it  
counts.

That being said, it would be really really nice if all Ops would sync  
their clocks with a reliable standard.

-73 de Mike N3LI -