[CQ-Contest] Do all contest participants need to follow the rules?

[Michael Coslo]

On Mar 15, 2009, at 6:11 PM, James Duffey wrote:

> Jim - You wrote:
>
> "Last December I had the occasion to drive from Cleveland to
> Arlington, VA, on the Sunday of the ARRL 10 meter contest. To make the
> drive more interesting I put the 10 meter HamStick on the car, and to
> avoid additional confusion used a different callsign in each state.
> Nobody seemed to mind the extra qsos in their log, and several guys in
> Florida seemed really happy to work the District of Columbia on SSB in
> the last hour of the contest."
> This is another example of the circumstances that prompt my question.
> Those who do follow the rules can receive some benefit from someone
> who does not. In this case additional multipliers, and extra QSOs in
> the log. Are only those who submit a log expected to follow contest
> rules?

Let me put on the adjudicator hat here for a minute.....


Jim was operating during a contest in which the mode he was operating  
was not a valid mode to submit a log.

So the question is was it acceptable for him to have QSO's with Ops  
who WERE operating in the contest.

In trying to boil this down to the simplest one sentence question it  
becomes "Are Operators who are planning on submitting a log allowed to  
have QSO's with Ops who are not?"

There are no rules to this effect. Furthermore,  Jim not only was  
operating ethically, but he was performing a service to those Ops who  
were officially operating in the test.

Other's opinions may differ, but it is hard for anyone to argue that  
less QSO's are better.....


-73 de Mike N3LI -