[CQ-Contest] DXCC cheating using out-of-country remotes

[Mike Smith VE9AA]

I’ve been a ham since 1978, but I realize many of you have been licensed longer (or some, shorter).
The first time I “realized” that hams cheated at DXing was in the late 1980’s on 6M. (call me naïve)

For a cpl yrs there was a 7-land station (in a CN/CM grid iirc), that had some kind of remote (via 56k twisted pair I am guessing) and he would transmit from somewhere in W1 land (we think Maine, but not sure as we didn’t always hear him) and he’d work the 6M EU openings that VE1YX, VE1ZZ(sk), myself, etc would get on F2.

It blew my mind that people could be like that, but after a few times I decided that they’re only cheating themselves and if they wanted to rack up the country count or whatever, it was on them, not me. They are the ones that have to sleep at night and look at the guy in the mirror the next morning.

Some years back there were 1 or maybe 2 I-stations that I seemed to work in some of the 160M  contests.  One time a QSO happened at HIGH NOON in Italy and they were 20/9 here while I was looking for W7’s and KH6’s on greyline/SR here in NB.  Since I knew it was completely impossible, I didn’t log them.

Nowadays I just log whatever and move on. I barely do any DXing these days. (can’t be bothered) and most of what I do is the larger contests.  I just log what they send and don’t worry if they are cheating with power, remote or anything else.  It still bothers me, but much less than before.

It's like when I see a motorcycle go past my house at 100MPH.

It’s on them.

73 de Mike VE9AA
================

This actually doesn't belong on the contest reflector, but to answer your
question, no and no.

A recently deceased officer in ARI (the Italian amateur radio
organization), frequently remoted into his house in VP2V to work Pacific
DXpeditions.

73,
Steve, N2IC

On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 9:06 AM Barry W2UP <w2up.co at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm sure this isn't a new problem, but it's pretty obvious with the current
> KP5 operation.
>
> Listening to the pileups, I've heard a number of European callsigns calling
> the KP5 on the high bands during the USA evening, with loud signals here in
> Colorado, when the band is not open to Europe.  Obviously they are using
> remotes in N. America.
>
> Clearly this destroys the integrity of the DXCC program.  Does anyone
> care?  Is anything being done to address it?
>
> Barry W2UP

Mike - Keswick Ridge, NB, Canada