[CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ

[Ed Sawyer]

Dick, Great points here.  Thanks.

At my station, the only time I hear sidetone is when I am manually keying.  If its computer generated, there is no sidetine to hear - and I am often listening on the other radio and don't want the sidetone in the audio at all.

I believe it was clarified by the CQWW committee that it was not required to have the transmitted audio in the recording.

Ed  N1UR

-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Green WC1M [mailto:wc1m73 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 2:38 PM
To: 'Neal Campbell'; 'Rudy Bakalov'
Cc: 'reflector cq-contest'; 'Ed Sawyer'
Subject: RE: [CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ

I'm OK with the rule. It's an extra step that requires a little technical proficiency and attention to detail, but I can't imagine it's a huge burden to ops who have built competitive stations and/or operate them well enough to get into the top-5. And it's nice to have a recording to review how you did under certain circumstances, such as which letters give you trouble when you're really tired.

I use Writelog, which has built-in compressed audio recording with indexing from the log (you can right-click on a QSO and hear the audio.) I record from a Y-cable on the headphone jack to a soundcard. Relatively easy to setup, though soundcards can be a pain to work with on Windows. 

That said, this past CQ WW CW I stumbled across a couple of "gotchas" when recording:

1. I started out thinking I might do a serious effort, so I setup the recording. At one point I took a sleep break and turned off the recording, hoping to save some disk space. But when I returned to the station I forgot to turn on the recording. Luckily, poor conditions and my state of mind caused me to end up doing less than 30 hours, so no harm. But I wonder what I would have done had I made the top 5. In retrospect, I realize that it may not have been necessary to turn off the recording. I think just turning the AF Gain to zero might have done the trick, depending on how the compression algorithm works. At any rate, it's necessary to periodically check to make sure the recording is going. Also, I have to remember to restart the recording if I have to reboot Writelog. There's a setting that automatically initiates it on startup, but you can imagine how that can cause unintended results between contests if I forget to turn it off!

2. I always turn down the sidetone volume on my run radio as low as possible. This allows me to focus more attention on the S&P radio during CQs and cuts down on fatigue. Though I can hear my transmissions (barely), they aren't audible on the recording. I couldn't find a setting where my sidetone was audible on the recording but not annoying/fatiguing to me, and there's no way to get the sidetone on the recording without my hearing it (well, I can think of a way to do it with an external keyer or mic amp and an audio mixer, but would rather avoid that.) I don't know the exact policy, but I suspect the more important track is the S&P radio, on which I use full sidetone volume. Does the rule that requires logging *exactly* what's sent and received mean the sidetone has to be audible on the run radio too? Does anyone know? Can someone from the committee weigh in on this?

73, Dick WC1M

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal Campbell [mailto:nealk3nc at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 11:28 PM
To: Rudy Bakalov <r_bakalov at yahoo.com>
Cc: reflector cq-contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>; Ed Sawyer <sawyered at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQWW SSB 2017 Effective DQ

It is an unintended consequence of years of reflector bashing about the 'rampant cheating' going on all the time. This is the most common topic of this reflector. Now, the committee has your attention, they tighten up verification and start bouncing logs out of competition for not following the rules.

Now everyone is pissed that they are DQ'ing logs.

This seems to be a forum looking to be unhappy.


Neal Campbell

Abroham Neal Software
www.abrohamnealsoftware.com



See components used in our computers at:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/abrohamnealllc




On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 8:41 PM, Rudy Bakalov via CQ-Contest < cq-contest at contesting.com> wrote:

> So if a person is DQ'd, what happens to the next person on the list? 
> In this case Top 5 could not provide a recording and now the former 
> Top 6 becomes Top 5; is he/she expected to provide a recording? How 
> far down the list does the requirement go?
> Rudy N2WQ
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