[CQ-Contest] Self spotting
Henry Pollock - K4TMC
kilo4tmc at gmail.com
Mon Mar 11 17:25:29 EDT 2024
Mike,
Re "I still have not figured out who was damaged by this rule change."
As someone who operates "unassisted" and claims to be "unassisted" in my
submitted logs, I feel disadvantaged against those "unassisted" who self
spot. As someone else posed a short while back, self spotting is like
having a second radio calling CQ for you while operating radio one, thus a
variation on SO2R. It would be nice to know in the published results which
"unassisted" stations posted a single or more self spot. But then there are
those who would use a different call when spotting themselves...Oh my,
Pandora's box has been opened...the key tossed in the ocean...and the lock
mechanism damaged beyond repair...
I know I have been spotted in the past, but I don't know by whom, and I
surely have not asked anyone to spot me.
73,
Henry - K4TMC
On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 2:42 PM Mike Fatchett W0MU <w0mu at w0mu.com> wrote:
> I still have not figured out who was damaged by this rule change.
>
> There is little collaboration between the spot providers. I don't know
> if Lee, VE7CC is subbed to this group or not but he could detail how CC
> clusters such as his and w0mu-1 work. There is CC cluster, AR Cluster
> DX summit and more. All the servers are run independently. As a
> cluster server owner I have some flexibility on what spots I accept
> etc. But most of the major parts are controlled by the software/developer.
>
> I have no problem with servers that will allow or disallow self
> spotting. That should be the decision of the owners of the software and
> server owners.
>
> I recall when I had my skimmer going that the skimmer program would not
> pass what it considered self spots. If my skimmer was called w0mu-# it
> would not pass spot decoded for W0MU. At the time self spotting was not
> legal and some people considered a skimmer located within the circle and
> sending spots to either the RBN or a cluster could be considered self
> spotting.
>
> W0MU
>
> On 3/11/2024 10:26 AM, Edward Sawyer wrote:
> > 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
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