[CQ-Contest] Log Checking Technology

[Jeff Clarke]

I don't claim to be an expert on SDR technology. I am pretty familiar with the RBN.

I'm curious on how a contest sponsor checks for certain violations , such as transmitting two signals at the same time, when a station is in a category where they can transmit only one signal at a time? An example of this would be SO, SOA, or M/S ( that would have more than one station on a run band , using a lockout). The multiplier station  on another band would be allowed the transmit at the same time the way the rules are written.

Say for example I'm operating CQWW DX CW at PJ2XXX in the M/S category. I have three stations setup. I have two radios on the run band, one that calls CQ and another one that tunes the band and interleaves QSO's. A lockout device is used that prevents me from transmitting two signals on that band at the same time The 3rd radio is used on another band to work only multipliers and adhering to the 10 minute rule.

So the 1st minute of the contest I work 6 QSO's , three on the run frequency , two on my other transmitter on the same band and one multiplier on another band. When I submit my log to the contest sponsor I have six QSO's logged as 0000z. Three of my contacts are on 14005 and the other two are on 14025 and 14050. The multiplier radio QSO is on 7005.

How does the contest sponsor determine if I screwed up with my lockout system? I don't think the RBN logs down to the second? I checked reversebeacon.net and it logs down to the minute. If they listen to a SDR recording are they going to listen to every contact a top scoring station makes, that uses this technique heavily,  to make sure they didn't screw up. Plus what's stopping someone from massaging their log and changing a contact to their run frequency? It wouldn't be too hard to change a contact from 14025 to 14005 and have the log checkers catch that. Certain contests don't even require frequency information. You could technically log all your 20 meter contacts as 14000. Are they going to check the RBN or SDR to make sure I didn't do this to try to hide something?

I downloaded a log for a station for a recent contest that was multi-single that I suspected was using multiple transmitters with a lockout system to figure out what they were doing. According to the frequency information in their log they made 120 contacts on their 2nd run band radio the first hour of the contest while maintaining a 3-4 QSO rate on their run frequency. I haven't looked at the whole log yet but from what I skimmed thru so far they were maintaining at least a 50 per hour rate for the whole contest on their 2nd run band radio. Is this possible considering interstation interference issues you would have to deal with. They must have some pretty good and narrow bandpass filters.

With volunteer's doing the log checking for most contests do they even have the time to check logs down to this detail.  Plus it gets even more complicated when you have to check a M2X or MM log. My guess is NO.

I have only touched the surface. How do you prove some is not using a remote receiver or has a relief operator unless someone walks in and catching someone doing this? Only a fraction of the cheaters are being caught. It's pretty sad what contesting has become with the new technology we have today.

Jeff KU8E