[CQ-Contest] SO Categories

[RT Clay]

>
>With panadapters, waterfall displays, SO2R, and bandmaps allowed in unassisted it
>is actually impossible to determine who is using Skimmer technology and who isn't.
>If you disagree with this, please explain.

I disagree. Unassisted and assisted are still quite different. The main difference with bandmaps/waterfalls is that they provide point/click tuning which is not sequential. They do not decode CW (this seems to have been forgotten in this discussion, or conveniently ignored to push an agenda) or tell you where multipliers are. If you listen to the audio of an unassisted op using a bandmap/waterfall, you are still going to hear them tuning in stations that are dupes- over and over and over. It just may not be sequential in frequency.

And also consider...the currently required audio recordings can not detect use of assistance 100% to begin with. Suppose an operator not using a waterfall/bandmap peeks at the list of spots and uses this to choose the "best" part of the bands to tune for mults. As long as the number of spots used isn't large enough to be suspicious, how could an audio recording detect this?
If the sponsors want a better way to check than an audio recording, why not require a video recording?
TorN4OGW