[CQ-Contest] Inequity of Zone Checking

[Hank Greeb]

My comment is my own opinion, and I am NOT associated with CQ WW, nor 
any contest except the Michigan QRP Club's contests, which are not in 
anyway associated with CQ WW.

I'd say, IF we want to really be able to judge the ability to copy under 
adverse conditions, there should be some "useful" information in the 
contact, rather than a "known" 5NN and a "Known" (for the most part) 
zone.  Maybe, something like a first four letters of the name of the 
operator and the birth year (for example).

The 5NNxx is "known" for most countries, and the Log Checker doesn't 
even check for the "599" part, so if I send "559" instead of "5NN" AND 
the fellow actually copies 559, it doesn't make any difference.

73 de n8xx Hg

On 11/30/2011 11:24 AM, ckr2q at optimum.net wrote:
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:34:05 +0000 (GMT)
> From: kr2q at optimum.net
> Subject: [CQ-Contest] Inequity of Zone Checking
> To: cq-contest at contesting.com
> Message-ID:<e4b8996fff80.4ed614ad at optonline.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> The following statements are my own opinion and should not be construed as anything official or representative of any contest committee with which I may be associated.
>
> > From an international standpoint, for CQWW, it would be grossly unfair to check the copied zones.  For stations NOT working USA qso's, one can, with 99+% certainty, "know" the zone based on the callsign.  For stations working USA qso's, there is no such certainty - just a probability based on "most W1's are in zone 5 and most W6's are in zone 3."
>
> That means that USA entrants can almost never "get the zone wrong" while "DX" working USA can very likely "get the zone wrong."
>
> In terms of scoring, this would be a gross inequity, with most "dings" for copying the wrong zone going to non-USA stations.  Very different than adjudicating for copying callsigns incorrectly.
>
> In terms of SCORING, why would the sponsor ever accept what the entrant logged?  As we recently saw with T2V, wrong zones can be sent....but should NOT be counted.  If KR2Q was active and sending 59923, it would be expected that everyone would LOG 59923 but clearly the sponsor should NOT count that QSO for zone 23.
>
> In case there is any confusion (IMHO), LOG what was sent but let the scoring be calculated on reality.
>
> REMINDER:  Please see disclaimer at the beginning.
>
> de Doug KR2Q