[CQ-Contest] Self-spotting

[jpescatore at aol.com]

I'm not a fan of the self spotting decision for HF contests, but I don't think it approaches mayhem - more just another level of erosion of old norms.
The Reverse Beacon Network (https://www.reversebeacon.net/pages/Using+the+RBN+33) quotes an average rate of about 20 spots per second during a major CW contest, which works out to roughly 3.5M spots over a 48 hour contest.
There are 288 10 minute segments in a 48 hour contest. If 5,000 ops were self-spotting every 10 minutes for the entire 48 hours, it would only be about 1M spots over the contest duration - and that is a very high estimate.
So, roughly a 30% increase in spotting volume is not going to be a big deal in a CW contest. In a phone contest, the spot volume is so low and the volume won't approach that of a CW contest.
73 John K3TN