[CQ-Contest] World Wide Digi DX Contest Results

[Paul O'Kane]

On 13/01/2020 20:01, John Geiger W5TD wrote:
> I make FT8/FT4 QSOs every day.  Very easy to set up remote operation using
> the shack computer and my cellphone so I can make QSOs from work, while
> walking around the neighborhood, etc.  It is still exciting to work a DX
> station, especially if it is a new one for the CQ DX Marathon for that
> year, or a new prefix for the digital modes.  Not a whole lot different
> that pushing the voice recorder button to say "59 Oklahoma" several hundred
> times in a SSB contest.

This neatly sums up much, as I see it, of what is devaluing ham radio 
and contesting.  It's the attitude that "because I'm a qualified 
ham-radio operator, and a reasonable person, anything I do that includes 
ham-band RF must be ham radio - especially when there's some cool 
technology involved".

It seems to me that when contacts are machine-to-machine rather than 
person-to-person, and cannot happen without dependence on a public 
communications utility (whether cellphone or internet), they become 
something other than ham-radio contacts.  They are hybrid-communications 
contacts, plain and simple - an ugly name for an ugly practice, but one 
that, nevertheless, accurately describes the activity.

The suggestion that such contacts are "not a whole lot different from 
pushing the voice recorder button . . " indicates the disregard some 
hams have for reality.  They may be fooling themselves, etc.

73,
Paul EI5DI