[UK-CONTEST] ARRL SSB

[Simon Pearson]

> It appears that someone in the UK, using BT as an ISP, has spotted Stu's
> call using made up pirated callsigns.  (note the same IP address for the
> different calls) There were other spots which appear to be genuine.
> Not sure if this an offence under computer or radio licence laws but the
> contesting community and the rightful owners of the calls have reason to be
> concerned.

Yes, so we've established that whoever was spotting MM0BSM was 
definitely located within the UK as a quick lookup on ripe.net 
reveals the IP block belongs to BT Central Plus (which I believe 
cover BT's several ISP guises, e.g. BT Broadband, BT Openworld, BT 
Yahoo, BT Cant-settle-with-one-brand-name etc).

But (and this is what somewhat baffles me) whoever in the UK was 
spotting MM0BSM was pirating various calls other than his own - why?!

I'm a member of the G6PZ team, thus if there was a team event @ G6PZ 
and I couldn't make it for whatever reason and heard them on-air, 
I'd quite probably spot them - but using M0CLW! OK, so some people 
class this as being unfair (so-called 'cheerleading'), but the 
bottom line is: I would not be violating any contest rules 
whatsoever and there is nothing in the rules that states 
cheerleading is forbidden.

Whoever was doing the spotting obviously wanted to use American 
calls to make everything look more genuine and to make the point 
that he was making the trip into the States (i.e. to wake up the 
American guys who would obviously think: "Ah, spotted by a fellow 
American").

To be honest, in my humble opinion, posting via DX Summit should be 
disabled (certainly during contest weekends), or at least they 
should generate a login system. At the end of the day, it is a 
source for self-spotters and for those to abuse the system. One very 
good example:
IT9RYH-@  14195.0 IT9RYH      please call me at 0039 0922 810833

Yes, I know it's annoying IT9RYH sitting on the Nino Window (er, 
sorry, DX Window), but just to make a point... ;-)

Dave K1TTT does a sterling job analysing the suspect spots from DX 
Summit. Must take quite a bit of time and effort. If it weren't for 
him, I'm sure the problem would be a lot worse than it currently is.

73,

-- 
Simon Pearson, M0CLW
* CDXC * WWYC * UKYC