[CQ-Contest] Pre-register to Play (Was: DXC Entry Reclassified to High Power)

[ve4xt at mymts.net]

Hi all,

I would add one thought to Hans's:

On any given contest weekend, we do not own the bands. Nor do organizers. We cannot compel non-participants to maintain radio silence, nor can we compel them to not play casually in the contest. The bands belong to everyone and everyone has the right to answer any CQ they wish.

From our perspective, Sunday doldrums in some contests are bad enough now, imagine how bad it will be if you can only work the limited number of stations who pre-register.

Furthermore, if anti-contest sentiment is bad now, imagine how bad it will be if we start telling non-registrants to sod off.

While Igor might be correct in saying removing Qs that can't be cross-referenced eliminates log padding, the cost to the contest, to contesting and to amateur radio is greater than the benefit. Also, CQ did not need such a limitation to catch the most famous example of log padding, did it?

73, kelly, ve4xt 

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 5, 2016, at 11:33 PM, <kzerohb at gmail.com> <kzerohb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I didn’t express my thoughts very well, Mike.  Let me try again.
> 
> Two thoughts to set the stage..
> 
> 1) In most contests there are a core group who are involved in the test in a serious fashion.  I don’t know what that fraction is, but let’s “round up” and say maybe 50% in SS, maybe 20% in CQWW, maybe 10% in IARU.  Just for illustration purposes, let’s say that the average for all tests is 25% (I think that’s wildly generous).  Those 25% are likely going to comply with a Pre-Register rule.
> 2) The remaining 75% of the participants are casuals, drop-ins, or otherwise not “seriously involved”.  They are highly unlikely to comply with a 48-hour-prior registration rule.
> 
> If group 2 QSO’s don’t count, and group 1 has a software roster of “good” calls, then group 1 is going to become inbred very quickly, and the logs are gonna be pretty thin.
> 
> 73, de Hans, KØHB
> "Just a boy and his radio"™
> 
> From: W0MU Mike Fatchett
> Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 2:49 AM
> To: kzerohb at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: Pre-register to Play (Was: DXC Entry Reclassified to High Power)
> 
> This idea is exactly what we are being told RDXC is.  If they don't get a log from me and I work people my qso's with them are apparently tossed out.   At least that is the way I the UA9 was explaining it.  I could be wrong but other have had qso's tossed that were known good contacts so it appears that this is the way this contest operates.
> Having a contest where everyone signs up has nothing to do with those that go to the medal stand, it it is more about trying to identifying and then having as many if not all the logs to compare for scoring.  
> I understand that many of us just wander into a contest and want to help.  That is not what this was about.
> 
> On 10/5/2016 8:35 PM, kzerohb at gmail.com wrote:
> Mike, I think that this idea is DOA.
>  
> 1) In the whole universe of contesters for any given worldwide or continental-scope contest, there is an almost invisible fraction of players who will go to the medal stand.  These folks (mostly) know who they are, and they would observe the 48-hour-prior registration deadline.
> 2) Some other small fraction, hopefuls, rising stars, soldiers-who-always-follow-orders, etc., would take enough time to sift through the rules and discover this “Register to Play” rule, and comply.
> 3) The remainder of us “Joe Sixpack” guys who drop in to just make a few Q’s, to practice for a different contest, to contribute some points to Minnesota Wireless,  to fill up some zone-dxcc-iota-state band/mode slots, or to (whatever), would ignore (or maybe not even know about) this rule, and would be shunned as “score reductions” and this reflector would be graced by yet one more persistent thread with a subject line about “My Q wasn’t good enough for them”.
>  
> 73, de Hans, KØHB
> "Just a boy and his radio"™
>  
> From: W0MU Mike Fatchett
> Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 2:09 AM
> To: cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] DXC Entry Reclassified to High Power
>  
> I think this idea could actually work is all entrants were required to 
> sign up 48 hours prior to the event.  24 hours from the event a list of 
> entrants would be made available so that you could update your software 
> to alert you to stations not in the contest and you could choose to work 
> them or not.  It still would not solve the issue where someone fails to 
> send in a log but if someone took the time to sign up they probably 
> would send in a log and the organizers would have an email address to 
> ask for it in the case they forgot, etc.
>  
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest