[CQ-Contest] Fw: [RRDXA] E73M - I have cheated

[Edward Sawyer]

A few comments on this post from someone who has been competitively low
power contesting for about 15 years now.  

 

99.9% of contesters are honest is probably close to  true.  If you figure
5,000 (just a number) people submitting logs in CQWW.  .1% is 5 people.  But
if those 5 are in the top 10, that's 50% of the top scores.  So even if its
0.1% it still matters.  

 

I think the only way to enforce power levels in contesting is to have local
groups that care.  As someone who has won many times the USA Low Power of
ARRL DX, CQ WW, and WPX, I have had more than one well known contester stop
by my QTH.  I am sure that a "look see" was on the agenda for some.  I own
no amplifiers, have mono band stacks, an unobstructed view towards EU and 1
inch hard line running to the towers.  To them, I am sure, it becomes
plausible that my station could actually do what is doing, without cheating.
Of course my 2 rigs are FT1000MP Mk Vs and I run 150W in ARRL and 100W in CQ
contests.  Could I run 200W and no one would know?  Probably, but what would
be the fun in that?  When I win, I want to know I won, fair and square.
When I lose, my thought is to doing better next time..that's it.

 

I would encourage the local clubs to start doing, pressuring, and reporting
substantiated claims of high power.  Hard to do it do if someone is running
10 W instead of 5W in QRP, but pretty easy with a Field Strength meter in
the "near filed" of the antenna if someone is running 25 -50W instead of 5W
or 500W instead of 100W in low power.

 

I encourage all contesters to honor the power level of their class and
country and to get organized locally to weed out or change the ways of the
few cheating.

 

Ed N1UR