[CQ-Contest] RBN contest scoring

[ktfrog007 at aol.com]

The post below from KQ2M is interesting to consider.  Aside from additional technology, we'd need much better RBN coverage of the entire globe.  Just for fun I took a look Thursday evening July 2 (Friday morning July 3 UTC) at the RBN active skimmer list.  

There were 153 skimmers online, although a number hadn't reported a spot for at least 15 minutes.  There were two countries in Africa (3V, V5), three in Oceania (KH6, VK, ZL) and three in South America (CE,CX, PJ2).  EU had many and NA had two (K, VE) and were both well represented in numbers.  Asia had 4X, 9V, BA, HL and JA.

3V and PJ2 might as well be considered as EU and NA, respectively.  Most of the world was dark.

Of course, this was on a dull weekday evening in early July.  I want to take another look during the upcoming IARU and especially during the CQ WWs in the fall.


And we haven't even considered phone skimming.  That might be facilitated by sub-audible digital call info imposed on the audio.

Any worldwide skimming and reporting system to replace logs would have to be virtually 100% perfect.  Handling missing data would be contentious and delay posting the results, perhaps even resulting in lawsuits.

So it's sci-fi for now.

In the meantime, the existing RBN and clusters could be used in real-time online logging to support cross-checking, analysis, cumulative scoring and flagging violations.  Visible data would be user selectable, as the band breakdown is now, so as not to reveal strategy.  I should point out, though, that in most competitive events the participants are present in the same venue and their performance is in plain sight of opponents and spectators and can be studied and analyzed.  There's no inherent reason why this shouldn't apply to ham radio contests, too although some information could be private.   There would still be limits on how much "spying" anyone can do as in the recent baseball sign-stealing scandal.  


73,
Ken, AB1J




-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Shohet, KQ2M <kq2m at kq2m.com>
To: ktfrog007 at aol.com; yccc at groups.io; w3ua at arrl.net
Sent: Thu, Jul 2, 2020 2:38 am
Subject: Re: [yccc] WARCA -- worldwide contesters ranking

I can imagine a time when the technology used to record contests and access that storage storage by the sponsors has advanced to the point where no one will even need to submit a log – the processing of the sdr will start at 0001z and the results will be posted a few days later.  One source of all the data and processed almost immediately with virtually 100% crosschecking of all qso’s and with all key clicks, wideband signals, dirty signals, multiple cq’s on the same band, malicious interference, intentional qrm, etc. all picked up and flagged immediately with appropriate score “adjustments” made to the offenders logs.

I’m looking forward to it!

73

Bob, KQ2M