When I'm working from Savannah and I need the US country of zone mult, I look for any of the loud known contesters and respond with my exchange + "thanks for the mult"... I also agree with when you are cqing and loud, "its the cost of doing business. I was adding VE's to the log one night and for every VE I worked, I got three US stations, most of whom didn't know what the contest was about, but just happy to work someone. For those, just explained the rules and encourged them to look for DX stations and have fun. Maybe some will become casual contesters on a regular basis. Noted lots of year 2000 and up folks during SS, so looks like there are some newer calls active.

I think in Rick's case 500 Qs is pushing 10%.

And for the record, I don't think Rick and his guys are lids - unless they don't log zero-pointers...I think he's as frustrated at working the zero-pointers as I am about losing a mult because of not having a zero-point Q logged. And it's extremely frustrating to have a pileup of S1 signals calling you from EU when you've got a couple (especially slow!) loud zero-pointers calling you.

--
Lee Hiers
"Have Dobro Will Travel"
....and traveling!

From: "Gregg W6IZT" <w6izt@bellsouth.net>

Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 18:27:59 -0500

To: 'Rick Dougherty NQ4I'<nq4i@contesting.com>; 'Hal Kennedy'<halken@comcast.net>

Cc: 'Courtney Judd K4WI'<k4wi@earthlink.net>; 'ACG'<Contest@alabamacontestgroup.org>; 'SECC'<secc@contesting.com>; 'Lee Hiers'<aa4ga@contesting.com>

Subject: RE: [SECC] US qso's

Over 500 zero point Qs, that is less than 1 percent. Not so bad, as others stated they were mults for the other guy. I had close to 2% zero point Qs and I’m glad to give out the mult.

From: secc-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:secc-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Rick Dougherty NQ4I
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 5:39 PM
To: Hal Kennedy
Cc: Courtney Judd K4WI; ACG; SECC; Lee Hiers
Subject: Re: [SECC] US qso's

Hi All..I am going to disagree with some of you..we had over 500 zero point qso's in the log..at our average hourly rate of 160 per hour that is 3 + hours that for all intensive purposes are wasted.....who knows how many qrp and low power guys were calling and got frustrated and moved on because we had to work the loud W"s...just my 0.02 worth from here..do I think they will change the rules..never...but it gets me that most of these zero pointers think they are helping out! Duh!

de Rick NQ4I

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Hal Kennedy <halken@comcast.net> wrote:

I could not agree more with Lee. I won't mention the call of the zone 5
station I worked that I was certain after listening carefully to the way
the exchange was handled I was not in their log. So I had to work
another one. This happens a lot in this contest for reasons Ill never
understand - why not log it if you took the time to work it?

Hal N4GG