Topband: Brave New World

[Guy Olinger K2AV]

Well, I *don't* understand why people are upset about this.

The K4VV crowd operated a station in Virginia that had all it's antennas
and all the RX and all the TX on one local property. They reported their
logs as VA, USA. That hardly seems a stretch of rules. The rules don't say
anything about all operators eating a meal on the property during the
contest to qualify.

There are no biblical instructions about remote operating. No words from
God. Just the rules put down by the contest organizers. The organizers get
to interpret their own rules any way they want. Don't like the rules, then
vote with your feet. Enough feet leave, they'll change the rules. But some
of you are complaining about the most popular contests. Hardly any
resounding protest exit going on there.

So just what does a "right way" statement criticizing the contest
organizers of a popular contest mean? Might as well say it's unfair to
drive on the left side of the road while in Britain.

The only possible cheating at K4VV would be that the remote operators used
RX that were not at the K4VV site. But if you think about it, the RX with
the antennas at K4VV are most likely far better than what the ops had at
home. It certainly would be so for me. I would not bother to substitute
anything at my site for the antennas and RX at K4VV. Good stations work out
all the stuff I could hear at my station in half of the first day.
Everybody works them. Working them is no advantage. The winners are made
from the stations that work the Q's and mults I can't hear at all at my
home station.

People have done remote mountain stations for decades, along with legally
using them in contests. They used UHF links or telephone lines and it was
difficult, expensive. Ready-made equipment for those purposes was not
available. Now the internet and galloping progress in circuitry make such
schemes available inexpensively.

Others will and have posted about people in retirement homes being able to
continue their hobby remotely, vastly improving late-year quality of life
for long-time hams. You gonna say fine, but you don't get to operate in
contests? Come on.

Others are complaining that remote stations in good places ruin
competition. Really? When was the last time you competed with K3LR, or
W3LPL? If anything, a station that can be staffed with anyone with internet
access will tend to increase competition for LR and LPL. Travel in winter
not needed, room and board for a mob not needed, taking Friday off for
travel not needed, etc, etc., will tend to increase on-the-air band-hours
in contests.

Let's hear a complaint from someone who has a few first place finishes, who
thinks "cheaters" doing remote operating are ruining it for them. But you
won't, because they will tell you that the number one factor in their wins
was the team's operating acumen (that 27 dB between the ears), butt in
chair, and preparation of station ahead of time. I don't hear Tim or Frank
D. complaining. Those folks and their operating crowd turn in top scores
from anywhere they operate. Therefore, using statistical logic, their main
advantage must be in something they carry around with them everywhere, like
something in their head.

There have been and always will be cheaters who want the acclaim of high
scores but who don't want to do the work to make it happen according to the
contest organizer's rules. Loading the entire 27 dB between the ears takes
WORK, and cheaters hate work. Remote or no remote will make zero difference
in that. Cheaters will always find a way to cheat. If not by remote, then
some other way. Removing remote operation from contests will not encourage
cheaters to do the work because they hate work.

If anything, the electronic progress of various kinds seems to be
INCREASING participation, which helps everyone. Folks will figure out how
to diminish the lag problem. And over time will figure a way to do slick
operating in spite of what lag remains. It will be neat to do one shift at
K4VV from Los Angeles and then another one from North Carolina, with
business travel in between. For many that would make a vast improvement in
what would have been yet another deadly dreary travel weekend.

Get over it. Deal with it. Enjoy the progress.

73, Guy.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 4:26 PM, Dave Blaschke, w5un <w5un at wt.net> wrote:

> Notice how ARRL is endorsing all of this. read that first paragraph,
> especially: "The scattered K3TN team worked *via the Internet *through the
> station of Jack Hammett, K4VV". I thought our hobby was about radio, not
> internet.
>
> On 2/25/2015 9:05 PM, Eddy Swynar wrote:
>
>> Hi Guys,
>>
>> I am really & truly surprised that nobody here has raised so much as even
>> an eyebrow at this story:
>>
>> http://www.arrl.org/news/no-one-in-the-shack-as-station-
>> logs-4200-contacts-in-arrl-dx-cw-contest
>>
>> The whole notion---to me, at any rate---compromises the very essence &
>> the "...joie de vivre!" of operating on 160-meters, don't you think...? And
>> to imagine that one of the "perpetrators" in all this is actually exuberant
>> about his accomplishment...
>>
>> “...'No one was in the K4VV shack for the entire contest!' said Mike L*,
>> W0**, who took part in the contest via K4** from his own shack in
>> Virginia..."
>>
>> This too is "progress"...? Oh well, I guess maybe it is. Time marches on,
>> things evolve, things "de-evolve," & nothing stays quite the same.
>>
>> ~73~ de Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ
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