[CQ-Contest] Single Op Assisted Question

[Hank Greeb]

Anyone care to expound on why some contests have SO-Assisted, whilst 
others lump all assisted operations into Multi Op?

Why do I ask?  As background, I gave a presentation concerning results 
of our 160 Meter effort from W8LRC as M/S at a meeting on Saturday, Dec 
11.  As part of this presentation I showed the assembled multitude some 
of the info which can be found on the reverse beacon network, on the 
live propagation web pages, and on dx-clusters.  (Thanks to members of 
the Mad River Radio Club and the Minnesota Wireless Association for 
telling me where to go to find such useful info.)

After the presentation a couple ops wanted to fire up the station on 10 
meters for the ARRL 10 meter contest, so we looked at the propagation 
charts, found that there were a few openings to the west coast, and made 
a few contacts.  Only one op actually operated, so we figured on 
submitting a SO-Assisted log.  Were we surprised!  With just one op plus 
the on line help we found he was in the M/S category.  No big deal, but 
this generated the above question.

It seems to me that SO-Assisted is so common it should be all-inclusive, 
especially for ARRL contests, particularly since there's reference to 
SO-Assisted in the general rules for HF contests.  (Lest I be considered 
un-knowledgeable about these rules, I do realize that the over arching 
rule says that specific rules for contests supersede the general rules 
if there is a conflict.)

Private comments are solicited.  Thanks in advance.

Tnx es 73 de n8xx Hg