[RTTY] BARTG HF Contest 2015 Preliminary Results

[pcooper]

Hi all,

I am not sure that this is a good idea, and probably requires a little more analysis before making this move.

As has been noted, there are FOUR instances of the time in each QSO, but the logged time is really of little or no consequence.

Proper contesting software will allow the user to transmit the time as part of the exchange, and will keep it at that same time if repeats are needed - and they were in many cases, with me at least.

I wonder how many of these logs that were off by more than 1 minute were not compiled using one of the major contesting programs?

I know Writelog handles it correctly, and I assume that N1MM and some of the others do too.

Looking at my RBN (from the first pass), I did note several deductions where the time was off by a minute or two, but what was more concerning were the number of contacts that appeared in the RBN that were off by a large number of minutes.
I had a couple that were something like 2h 40m off, and at least one was from a major contest station, which makes me suspicious.

The time as sent is pretty much arbitrary, and one only has to copy what was sent, not the ACTUAL time, but I would guess most serious contest entrants will have synched their shack PC at the start of the contest, or more likely have an app that keeps the PC clock synched all the time.
I am willing to concede that I may well have entered a wrong time from a few stations, especially given the awful conditions that were present during the contest, but I really can't understand why I would be so far off on a few.

It would be interesting to know what software the logs that were off by a minute or two were running.

I don't have access to my RBN here at work, but I will check it again when I get home, and see what it shows about times being off by so much.

73 de Phil GU0SUP