[CQ-Contest] The Meaning of Assisted

[Ward Silver]

> "Assistance" in Radiosport terms means >operating< assistance.

That's not correct. In nearly every case, it ONLY refers to receiving information outside the contest bands/modes during the contest about the operation of other contest stations.  That means spots, announcements, chat room text, text messages, phone calls, VHF voice nets, 30 meter PACTOR streams, etc etc etc.  The Assisted category definition ONLY applies to information going into (mostly) or out of (self-spotting) your station.

III.A.4. Single Operator Assisted (All Band or
Single Band): One person. (per rule III.A) One signal at
any one time. QSO alerting assistance is
allowed (this includes, but is not limited to,
packet, local or remote Skimmer and/or
Skimmer-like technology, Internet). Selfspotting
or asking to be spotted is not
allowed. Total output power per band must
not exceed 1500 watts or the output power
regulations of the country in which the
entrant is operating, whichever is less.

Rules on physical operating assistance are covered in the definitions of Single-Operator and Multi-Operator categories.

III.A Single Operator categories: For all
single operator categories, only one person
(the operator) can contribute to the
final score during the official contest period.

The word "Assisted" is too broad.  That's why the ARRL is gradually changing over to the word "Unlimited" so that this misdirected argument about "assistance" doesn't come up over and over and over and over.

73, Ward N0AX