[CQ-Contest] Should we drop 'CQ TEST'?

[Mike Fatchett W0MU]

How does not calling CQ test fix anything you wrote below?  Most people 
you work are not really competing and a good chunk of them will never 
send in a log.  Many weekends have multiple contests with differing 
exchanges.  We made it work for 40 plus years.  I don't want to rag chew 
and hand out wx reports if I were to simply call CQ.

I think you are over thinking it.  Lets not create a problem where one 
really does not exist.

There are only one or two contests that will not count a contact unless 
they have logs from both sides.  I think you are mistaking a nil for a 
unique.  Unique's are fine until you have a disproportionate amount of 
them.  Nils would only occur where they have logs from both parties.

W0MU

On 6/18/2024 5:51 PM, Ben Coleman NJ8J wrote:
> A few weekends ago, there were 3 different overlapping (time-wise) 
> contests going on with a World-works-World format, where, for the 
> stations who weren't in the sponsoring country, the exchanges were 
> identical.  Since you don't *have* to work stations in the sponsoring 
> country, calling 'CQ TEST' can get potentially confusing.  If you're 
> in a non-sponsoring-country and you respond to a 'CQ TEST' from a 
> station also in a non-sponsoring-country, which contest are you 
> actually participating in?  It's quite possible that you think the QSO 
> counts for one of the contests, and the other station thinks it's for 
> a different contest.  I can see this leading to NIL penalties because 
> he has the QSO logged in one contest, and you have it logged in another.
>
> Perhaps we should be discouraging the use of 'CQ TEST' unless for a 
> major contest (CQ DX, CQ WPX, IARL, etc) where there's not much doubt 
> which contest you're participating in, and prefer contest-specific CQs?
>
> Ben