[CQ-Contest] Self spotting

[Edward Sawyer]

What I found out last year is that while the ARRL decided it was okay to self spot, they never coordinated with the telnet clusters that this would be okay.  So while it may be in the rules to self spot, depending on what you do and how you do it, the world may not see that you are doing so.  What I found was:


  *   If you spot with DX Summit using the web form, almost none of the clusters forward the spot.  So only DX Summit users see it.  Which is a small percentage of active contesters.
  *   If you sign on to some clusters, they don't allow self spotting.  So it will accept the spot but not publicize it.  Apparently they "never got the memo" from ARRL.
  *   If you spot either yourself or another person, within some varying amount of time on the same frequency, the additional spots are ignored.  You have to change frequency by about 1khz for it to go around that rule.

The cluster community should really state what is published spots rules are so there isn't so much confusion.

Ed  N1UR