[CQ-Contest] Self-spotting explanation from CQWW blog

[Jeff Clarke]

I've been a ham for a long time and most of you around my age can relate to what I'm going to say.

Remember back when the operator had no outside assistance in a contest or chasing DX? You had to tune the bands to find out where a band was open to or find a DX station. I remember years ago reading articles by W9KNI about chasing DX. What he wrote back then isn't even relevant in today's world. The technology has taken that away. No need to understand anything about propagation or even tune the bands (the hunt) because all you need to do today is fire up the internet and point and click. That doesn't feel real challenging to me.

Think of the negative consequences that spotting has on contesting and DXing . Sure maybe it's convenient to click on a spot to work a station without having to tune around the bands. But how can someone feel a sense of accomplishment compared to when you do something on your own?  It almost seems like catching fish in a barrel.

Something I've observed over the past several years is that stations in rare countries don't even bother to get on in  DX contest anymore because of the unruly pileups that occur when they are spotted. Remember all the rare African stations you could work in the afternoon on 20 meters? They now seem to be fewer in number.

Unfortunately spotting has changed contesting forever and there is no easy fix to the problems that It causes. Plus it's not going away. It takes longer to have the results published by CQ because of all the detective work they have to do to expose cheaters. It's amazing to me they can do this with volunteers (BTW who probably have real jobs too) and have them out within a year.

I'm afraid that the CQWW rules are starting to become too​ restrictive . What's coming next? In the future are you going have to preregister your planned category?  Maybe the rules on spotting should be relaxed as many have suggested.  It will level the playing field for everyone when it comes to spotting.

This is all becoming too complicated. Like K1AR said contesting is supposed to be FUN. How are we supposed to recruit newbies into our passion for contesting? For someone new to contesting to read the commentary on this reflector why bother? It's just to much of a hassle to do things like recording our contest activity.

Jeff

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid