[UK-CONTEST] Entry levels in VHF Contests

[Andy Cunningham]

Paul
> It appears to me that most contributors feel ANY information thats known beforehand is cheating,but I bet theres not a huge rush for everyone to be clusterless in the next contest be it VHF or HF.
> I will continue to pop up in the various UK contests from my lofty perch in Devon for no other reason than to enjoy giving both points and IO80 away to  locals and DX regardless of KST use.
>   
The thing that annoys me is that half the people "just giving away 
points" score higher than I do!! :-)

Seriously though, how do you take the "any information that's known 
beforehand is cheating" to the right degree.

Does the fact that I know that M5BFL is likely to be around .225 and 
north east from me count as information known before hand?

Does "hope to work in you in the contest nest week"/ "yeah, I'll be 
listening around .275 as usual" count?

Or the fact that I'll now be looking for you in IO80 because that's one 
of my "hard" squares from here?  No, wait, I knew that already: 
http://www.cunningham.me.uk/images/contestplot.png.

As far as I'm aware, all of these are legal and "in the spirit of the 
contest", as is passive use of other information sources.  This would 
exclude self spotting or soliciting contacts, but it's OK to monitor the 
cluster for other spots. Knowing where to look is research, IMHO. 

Andy 2E0XAC