[CQ-Contest] Convergence and Change

[Kelly Taylor]

The problem with cheating is catching it might be an excellent illustration of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the more you try to quantify and control it, the more you just push it around. 

You cannot institute any method of trying to control it that cannot, by a smart enough cheater, be subverted. Video can be faked, audio can be edited, a power meter can be deliberately miscalibrated, referees can be bought, spots can be carefully used so as not to raise suspicion and the audio from a remote receiver can be fed straight to the user's ear, under the headphone muff and downstream from the audio recording. A little heat shrink and nobody watching the video would be the wiser. A little pretence of struggling to copy and feeding just enough of the remote audio into the recording feed, and the illusion is complete. 

Not to mention the notion of a complete subversion of the presumption of innocence. 

The whole idea of the requirements for audio/video of stations expecting to place well is also repugnant. It leaves very little room for magic, such as WA2GO in QRP in 2001 SS from Alaska, when the aurora parted for just long enough, or then-N6NT from Panama in ARRL DX with a stick in the mud and low dipoles. Did either expect to do well, let alone set their respective records? In John's case, his expectation should have been 24 hours of screaming into the dancing, colourful lights. 

Who, really, is the customer for WW or SS, anyway? Is it the 10 stations in each Top 10, or the thousands of others who aren't?

The big guns need the little guys far more than the other way around. 

Short of developing a neural interface to read the operator's mind, or hiring Betazoid empaths, much of the discussion about catching cheating is a dog chasing its tail. 

All you do is make life difficult for most operators with zero impact on cheating. Time for some Zen. 

73, kelly, ve4xt 


Sent from my iPhone

> On May 16, 2016, at 9:04 PM, Rich Assarabowski <konecc at snet.net> wrote:
> 
> What you've just described is WRTC on-site competion :)     The current recording rule in CQWW only applies to those who expect a
> top finish, the idea is of course NOT to scare away the bread and butter of contesting which are the casual operators.    One can
> easily come up with absurdly expensive and complicated suggestions, the challenge is to come up with reasonable yet clever ideas
> that would discourage cheating.
> 
> From the point of view of the "big gun" who's invested lots of time and money in building a station and has spent many sleepless
> nights at the radio, unless everyone plays the game straight, it's no longer a sport...
> 
> --- Rich K1CC
> 
>> How about we hire referees to be at every single station in the contest, and give them all Alpha power meters and gatekeeping of
> all lines of >communication into the shack?
>> 
>> After all, video and audio can be faked.
>> 
>> Shouldn't be more than a few million each contest. I'm sure all the sponsors have that much kicking around, given the kajillions
> they save by using >volunteer labour. 
>> 
>> Sorry for being facetious, but there has to be a cost-benefit analysis, and the costs could be great, and non-monetary in nature. 
>> 
>> All serious operators NEED the little guys. Contests would be very boring if it was just a matter of which big gun worked the most
> other big guns. And >the little guy is almost guaranteed to be sitting back, scratching his head thinking, "Don't they realize it's
> just a hobby? If that's what playing in a contest >means, screw that." 
>> 
>> You're never going to eliminate cheating, but you might just kill contesting in the process. 
>> 
>> 73, kelly, ve4xt
>