[CQ-Contest] When it's over, it's over (again)

[W0MU Mike Fatchett]

I would like to believe that all of us who were attempting to pass 
emergency traffic would slow down enough to ensure we get that 
information 100 percent correct.  The example given is not really what 
contesting is.  Do I believe that contesters would be better as high 
volume traffic passing.  Yes.

Training in the FD is important doing live fire exercises ups the 
attention.  Going on a real call really ups the attention and how things 
are done.  Training is great but there is no substitute for the real 
thing.  We can talk all day about how to fight a wild fire and all the 
things that happen.  You can't really grasp every concept or what you 
will really see and have to deal with until you are on a real fire.

Apples to Oranges comparison in regards to the prescription.

A live scoring/checking system would be amazing!  I suspect the bust 
rate would go down if we had such a system.

People will game the game as much as possible, not saying they are 
cheating necessarily but taking short cuts in "practice" events.

W0MU


On 11/10/2016 9:18 AM, Ward Silver wrote:
> > If it wasn't a penmanship contest then, why is it a typing contest now?
>
> At the risk of setting off a "plastic owl pointing true north by 
> remote control" thread...
>
> Why is it that we have contests at all?  It is to practice our ability 
> to communicate and to reward effectiveness - in whatever form that 
> takes.  Part of it is knowing when the bands are open and closed.  
> Part of it is assembling a station that works well. Part of it is 
> having good operating technique.  And part of it is accurately 
> transcribing the exchanged information into whatever format is required.
>
> We are fond of claiming that contesting makes us good public service 
> operators and all that back-patting we do for ourselves. Imagine we 
> are relaying orders for prescription medicines needed in a disaster 
> area.  Is a typo in "hydrochlorothiazide" acceptable because we were 
> in a hurry?  ("Can you give me that phonetically before the band 
> closes?")  Is mistakenly changing a dosage of 50 mg to 500 mg OK 
> because we hit 0 twice? ("Whoa - how did that huge hairy bat get in 
> here?")  Of course not...we would recognize that as an error and we 
> should do so when N0AX gets changed to N0XA. Each unforced error needs 
> to produce negative feedback so we will work to lower our error rate.  
> The CQ WW introduction of penalties for errors was exactly the right 
> remedy for sloppy operating because it provides both carrot and stick 
> to operate at a rate no faster than what optimizes effective 
> operating.  Nothing is error-free but a three-QSO penalty has a way of 
> focusing the mind.
>
> At any rate (so to speak), anything noted during the period of 
> competition is fair game for log correction.  I would prefer in the 
> long term that QSOs are submitted in real-time and verified shortly 
> thereafter so that this whole notion of "log" goes away along with all 
> the misbehavior and delays it engenders, but in the mean time, 
> transcription into the submitted record of competition is as much a 
> part of the contest as transmitting the information in the first place.
>
> 73, Ward N0AX
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest