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

[Randy Thompson K5ZD]

Don has made some very good points.

The Contest sponsors do not have magical powers to detect power cheating.
You cannot assume the sponsor will be able to determine if a station is
cheating in this way.  The best way to help is to report your suspicions, or
better, to provide evidence.  These "suspicions" are very helpful to the
sponsor in knowing where to look for more information.

Power cheating is the steroids of ham radio contesting.  Anyone who looks
away or ignores the problem is not helping the sport and stealing something
from all of us.


Randy, K5ZD

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:cq-contest-
> bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Don Field
> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 8:46 PM
> To: cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Fw: [RRDXA] E73M - I have cheated
> 
> As manager for the IOTA contest, I feel I should comment. We dealt with
> one station who repeatedly entered QRP and had scores typically 50% higher
> than other QRP entrants. He no longer participates. We were able to do
> this because we had corroborating evidence from the country concerned that
> he was indeed running substantially more than QRP. But it took a couple of
> years to get to the point where we were sure.
> 
> So I am not clear how Kostas expected us to identify Low Power entrants
> who were using high power (other than one that posted a photo on their
> website with linear in full view :-)  ). Contest organisers need to be fed
> the necessary information, and need to have evidence - there are too many
> people nowadays ready to threaten legal action if their integrity is
> impugned. That said, it is getting easier with the RBN network to make
> comparisons between stations geographically close, but even then there are
> big variations in site, antenna orientation, etc.
> 
> That said, it's a pity if anyone stops participating because they feel the
> organisers are not coming down hard on such cheats. It comes down to why
> you participate in the first place. Is it purely to win? Is it to have fun
> and run some pile-ups. Is it (in the case of the IOTA contest) to work
> some new islands? There are several possible motivations. Some want to win
> at all costs. Some never expect to win, but they actually make these
> contests work
> - without the "participants" (the "also rans", call them what you will)
> the serious entrants would have a very thin time indeed!
> 
> Don G3XTT
> IOTA COntest Manager
> 
> On 18 August 2011 17:42, Kostas Stamatis <sv1dpi at otenet.gr> wrote:
> 
> > I have lost from others SV cheating this way.... I knew that they had
> > amplifiers and sent their log as Low power. What could i do? I was
> > expecting RSGB (it was a previous iota  contest) to catch them.
> > Unfortunately nothing.
> > So i stopped participating on iota contest. Which is the next one? I
> > don't know if i must stop contesting at all or i should buy a bigger
> amplifier...
> > CQ and ARRL can not understand that if they continue to follow this
> > policy their contests will loose popularity? They can not see that
> > Russian, Slovenian and others contests gain popularity because the
> > sponsors trying hard (and do it) to catch cheaters? This is the most
> > important thing and they keep trying to have good public relations and
> > not correct things. Even penalties for cheaters are not big. Just my
> opinion.
> >
> > 73 kostas SV1DPI
> >
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