[CQ-Contest] Self Spotting

[kq2m at kq2m.com]

Hi Stan,

You have beautifully summarized my feelings on the unfairness for a 
given station of SSB spots or lack of them, that I have seen and 
experienced over the years in DX contests.

Some beauty pageant "favorites" get spotted seemingly endlessly by a 
coterie of friends, club members, and well-wishers etc. which is fine, 
while others calls are summarily ignored and NOT spotted which is NOT 
fine.  The funny part is some of the "favorites" routinely downplay the 
importance and advantage of the spotting of their helpers - I believe 
that they are knowingly downplaying and attempting to conceal their 
advantage.

Spotting MATTERS - that's WHY people spot the stations that they do and 
don't spot others!  And self-spotting definitely equalizes the playing 
field even if it is done on one network like DX Summit.  Given my lack 
of awareness of such things because I almost always operate SO 
NON-Assisted, I never even heard of the website that Dmitri mentioned.  
DX Summit is the only one that I have access to or looked at, so, as he 
pointed out, I was not even being that effective self-spotting on just 
DX Summit, which means that self-spotting (evening up the SSB contest 
playing field) could have been far more effective for me.

I get the discomfort that people have about self-spotting - either those 
who refuse to do it, or those who do it either to learn how useful it 
might or might not be (like I did this past weekend) or those who fully 
embraced it immediately, either because they were doing it 
surreptitiously before or wanted to do it but could not and are glad to 
be able to do so now without question.

After my experiences this weekend, I intend to do it in future ARRLDX 
contests but will not miss it in CQWW.  I still do not like 
self-spotting, but I am now aware of its advantages and there are many.  
For those that think that "Spotting doesn't help" or used that as an 
excuse for not doing it, I say "Bunk!".  Spotting ALWAYS mattered and a 
simple log analysis would easily prove it.

I believe that people should spot others whether they are friends or 
not, club members or not, etc.  If you spot someone you are 
acknowledging that it helps the spotted, or that you are attempting to 
help them even if you do not "Believe".  So why not help others too?  
It's certainly not fair or sporting if you don't.

And, if you are going to self-spot, then have the guts to self-spot WITH 
YOUR OWN CALLSIGN!

After the contest I looked up the spots of many SO callsigns.

There were some that did not self-spot.  COOL!

Some self-spotted with their own calls.  Doing it the right way. GOOD!

Some self-spotted with alternate calls they use in other contests or 
"club callsigns" domiciled at their own qth and from their own station.  
Why the subterfuge?  You KNOW that it is your callsign that only you use 
when you operate, so this WAS self-spotting that was being camouflaged 
as though someone else was actually spotting you. Is that ethical?  HECK 
NO in my book!  Others may disagree.

And one opr., who is well known, used a BOGUS FOREIGN CALL to self-spot 
while operating in the US.
WTF is that?  Knock it off - That's completely unethical! as well as 
totally unnecessary.

There were also some well-known ops self-spotting under callsigns "SWL", 
"SWL-1", etc.  Again. WTF is that?
And why play that silly game?

If you are going to self-spot then DO SO. It IS allowed. But do it under 
your own callsign or, if operating from a Multi, then self-spot with 
your callsign and self-spot the callsign of the multi-op.  But don't 
self-spot with a callsign that doesn't exist or from a callsign from a 
foreign country which misrepresents who is actually doing the spotting.  
SHEESH!

Also, when I self-spotted, I did not provide any info other than my 
call.  I did not list my state or write out a comment like "Beaming JA". 
  I wanted to be as "clean" as possible.  I have no idea if we are 
allowed to add information like that or not, so I did not add anything 
whereas some others did.

I don't know what the rules are, if any, on self-spotting or how often 
we could do it.  I spent a lot of time searching for any ARRL guidance 
on that and was not able to find anything.

73

Bob, KQ2M






































On 2023-03-09 08:32, Stan Stockton wrote:
> John,
> 
> Here is my take on self spotting.  On CW you have a perfectly fair
> situation.  If you can generate a signal that can be heard by a
> Skimmer station you will be spotted automatically by the RBN. There is
> no reason for your friends to spot you or for you to spot yourself.
> It will have minimal to no impact unless you don’t have a signal
> picked up by any Skimmer stations.
> 
> On SSB, without self- spotting, you have an unfair situation where the
> difference between winning and losing could be the difference in how
> many of your friends spot you versus how many of your competitors’
> friends spot them.
> 
> It would be totally unfair for a station to win a contest because he
> was in a big club with several members spotting him regularly while
> the better operator at the better station lost because he didn’t have
> that support. Self spotting on SSB levels the playing field to a great
> extent just like the RBN does on CW.
> 
> 73…Stan, K5GO
> 
>> On Mar 9, 2023, at 7:49 AM, K3TN via CQ-Contest 
>> <cq-contest at contesting.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Self spotting obviously did not ruin the ARRL SSB, and it is 
>> definitely one now legal way to increase score. But, it just doesn't 
>> feel right. Below is what I sent to Bob W5OV in the ARRL contest forum 
>> and directly to the CAC.
>> Context: Bud AA3B both independently put in similar but slightly 
>> different feature requests to the N1MM Logger+ team to support comment 
>> field labeling of self spots. Bud's implemented - you can now include 
>> text in your self spot, Bud suggested "QRV" and a few were doing that. 
>> Bud's goal was to make finding self spots more easily. The version 
>> pushed out before the ARRL DX SSB includes Bud's suggestion.
>> Mine was rejected - I wanted a default value put in the text field so 
>> I could choose to filter out self-spots. Right now the AR cluster 
>> syntax doesn't support doing so. That would hurt me more than it would 
>> hurt any self spotter, but, like not using history files, it is what 
>> I'd like to do.
>> I'm going to check to see if there has been a feature request turn 
>> Spot All S&P Qs by default, which I think is a much better solution.
>> 73 John K3TN
>> 
>> Hi, Bob - I feel like self spotting goes against the values we've had 
>> in contesting and contesting rules for many years.
>> 
>> In the past there have been little things, like MultiMulti ops not 
>> being allowed to go home and work the MM from home. That was never 
>> going to swing the results but it represented a value that QSOs should 
>> be made the right way, kinda like fishing in a barrel is not an 
>> acceptable norm in fishing.
>> 
>> I sent in comments that I was against it in HF non-SSB contests where 
>> we already have skimmers doing a fine job of spotting stations large 
>> and small. I'm not a big VHF contester so don't think my opinion 
>> shouldn't count there  - but I feel the same way there! Contesting and 
>> skeds to me should not go together, nor should self-spotting.
>> 
>> The rules changed, so be it. I'd like a way in CW and RTTY contest for 
>> me to not participate. I doubt that is a meaningful punishment to 
>> anyone but me, and it let's me maintain my values. The other way would 
>> be for me to only look at skimmer spots, which would punish me a bit 
>> more!
>> 
>> I would have much, much, much rather see the CAC and members talk with 
>> the contesting community to think of ways rules could be changed to 
>> encourage more spotting in SSB contests - that is the real issue that 
>> was trying to be addressed, since there is no shortage of spots in CW 
>> and RTTY tests.
>> 
>> A feature request to N1MM to make the "Spot every S&P QSO" the default 
>> would have been a simple step. The ARRL using RBN stats after the 
>> contest to have "Top 10 Human Spotter" listings in the results, maybe 
>> even offer $20 coffee cups to the top spotters, etc. Many other ways 
>> to get more spots in SSB tests.
>> 
>> I've been a fan of leaping on most technology changes that have caused 
>> controversy, like FT8 and remote operating. But to me this (and 
>> history files that I choose not to use) are like post contest log 
>> manipulation. A norm that I'd like to see N1MM Logger+ enable choice 
>> in, just the way Logger+ was changed years ago to make post-contest 
>> log manipulation harder (not impossible!).
>> 
>> 73 John K3TN
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