Topband: Foreign stns using NA remotes for K1N

[Gary Smith]

I don't have a dog in this hunt, I haven't used RHR but reading some 
of the comments got me to thinking that things seem to progress on a 
logical plane; If you control your radio from your computer say with 
N1MM during a contest or use one of the SDR radios with software 
guiding the radio, are you not running your radio remotely?

If one wants to say it is OK to use N1MM or any other software to 
control your radio if it's inside your house then you are agreeing 
that distance from the rig itself is acceptable, the disagreement 
then is to define how much distance is too much. I'm sure there are 
many purists who feel using computers ruined contesting and surely 
there are those who feel computers ruined the essence of DXCC.

Obviously achieving DXCC has changed as anyone doing so for years 
understands. When I made my first 100, all was done by coming on the 
DX on my own, some guys got calls from a phone tree but I had no tree 
I was part of. Then there came packet and Bulletin boards. Later 
Internet Relay Chatrooms & later came the internet with spotting 
networks. With today's radios, internet DSP and improved Rx 
technology, it's obviously far easier today to work DXCC than ever 
before. How many of us today wait for our tube receivers to warm up 
before listening? It's simply not the same and won't be the same 
again.

So to me, I take the grumbling I'm hearing being more like sour 
grapes from those who paid a lot of sweat and failures to get the 
eventual successes they earned after years of hard work. The idea of 
other hams using available technology to do what they took years to 
do is offensive and to them, seen as cheapening the goal.

Honestly, if you were a millionaire back when or today and wanted to 
build a shack and antenna farm to be better than 99.99% of the guys 
out there, you could do it all along. The rest of us couldn't do it 
and envied the big guns, got angry at them for dining at the DX table 
before the rest of us could go after the leftovers.  It's always been 
"unfair" to the little guy, always will be, that's life. 

To me, if a signal comes from anywhere in the continental USA, it's a 
USA contact. If it comes from one island or the other in Hawaii, it's 
a KH6 contact. I personally don't care how the person makes the 
contact. As to DX calling from one country and pretending to be at 
their home QTH, there have always been fatuous liars and cheats, that 
too is human nature. Those people are to be pitied, they know what 
their illegal QSO is worth and what their illegal DXCC credit is 
worth, some people want letters associated with their name and they 
don't care how they get them. IMHO they should get called for that 
transgression, That's life too. 

MY DXCC chase is my joy, I don't gauge it by anyone else's 
expectations any more than they give a rats patoot about my opinion.

My 2 cents.

73,

Gary
KA1J


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