[CQ-Contest] Directional CQs & Contest Ethics

[w2lc at twcny.rr.com]

Directional CQ’s

Way back when, in the days of paper logs, every once in awhile I did directional CQing for VE multipliers, MAR and NL or whatever the mults were many years ago.  From here, you go to 80m in the morning down at the bottom of the band (much easier today), to get as close to the VE’s operating out of the US band, and call CQ VE1.  Usually in 5 minutes or so someone would answer, you explain the exchange, and there you go a sweep!  Back to running.

So yes it does work.

Assistance

Being in NY and all, very often I am asked, “you hear any NNY stations on?”  And my answer is always YES, I worked 7 of them last night on 80m. Easy from here, but not so easy for the western stations of course.  And I usually give them a couple calls to look for, like K2NNY the most obvious one, but there are many others that I have worked in NNY. Now I don’t think that makes me or the other guy a multi, but who knows.

There are bigger ethics issues than asking if you've heard a mult on:

Hypothetically speaking of course, not trying to imply anything here…. ;) ;)

Say you are operating a contest, but maybe you are just listening, or maybe you're just reading your email, and you realize that someone is breaking the rules. 

And I mean that you are certain, absolutely certain beyond any doubt, that a station and its operators and/or associates and/or friends are breaking a “well defined rule”. If there is such a thing.  What is the responsibility of the third party observer?

Does the third party observer have the responsibility to rat-out the rule breaker to the contest committee? Or. Should the third party person approach the rule breakers and set them straight? Or is there another option?  Or just ignore it?

73 Scott W2LC