[CQ-Contest] A new "DX cluster" experience for contesters

[Christian Schneider]

AB7E wrote:
>Almost all the major contests have non-assisted categories where any sort
of spotting network assistance is not allowed 

I didn´t do a complete overview but at least more or less major contests
like RDXC, WAG, All Asian, Oceania DX or WAEDC do not have unassisted
categories and stand for an international trend against them - where sailors
now have to compete against powerboats in the same category. It changes in
this analogy from "sailing" to "single boat race" substituting the skill
sailing with the skill of controlling the engine. So will it be with skimmer
replacing the fundamental contest-skill of quickly finding unworked stations
with the skill of optimal configuring the filter-software and optimizing the
scheme of clicking the fish in the barrell. So the focus of the contest
shifts one very fundmental step further away from a skill-comparison to an
engineers comparison. Some will loose fascination with this and some may
gain fascination. Btw it will be interesting to see how the unassisted
categories can stand aginst the overwhelming convenience of readily avaible
skimmer-spots on most screens. How should log-checkers decide which qso is a
skimmer-generated qso? With the myriads of spots for every station there
seem to be no reasonable chance for finding significant correlations between
spot and qso. 

73, Chris (DL8MBS)

(www.dl8mbs.de)