[UK-CONTEST] CQWW lowlife

[Steve Knowles]

At risk of ruffling a few feathers ...

The problem is caused by, not cured by the Cluster.

Omitting your callsign is a tried and accepted means of controlling the 
level of your pileup.  There's no point in having a pileup so huge than no 
signals can be distinguished - better to restrict it and so improve your 
rate.  In the 'good old days' that was FB - after a minute or two the level 
had dropped off, you sent your call and the patient ones who had waited were 
rewarded.

Now, some clown spots you on the cluster and all the world calls --- and the 
spot stays on the display for anything up to ten minutes.  What do you do? 
QSY or try to work the pileup down, not sending your call in the hope of not 
attracting new callers.  From the point of view of the DX station the answer 
is obvious - for everyone else, particularly those not using the cluster, 
it's a pain in the a**e.

Unfortunately, like nuclear weapons, the Cluster can't be un-invented. 
Outlawing its use in contests is no good, either, 'cos there are loads of 
non-contesters who want to work the rare stuff ... and people cheat as well! 
We don't have the power to switch it off, so we'll have to learn to live 
with it, or go QRT !!!

73

Steve
G3UFY


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Eastty" <ken.g3lvp at btinternet.com>
To: <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 9:35 PM
Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] CQWW lowlife


> Lowlights:
>> Relying on the cluster to tell me the callsign of the 'big gun' stations 
>> sending at huge speed and dropping a dit dit in between QSOs, but no 
>> callsign.  When the callsign does come, it is totally unexpected and sent 
>> at 50(?) wpm.  Twice the spotted callsign was in fact wrong.  This 
>> "anonymised dit dit/no callsign" phenomenon is becoming increasingly the 
>> norm and I dislike it.  Perhaps I'm just getting to that grumpy stage, 
>> though.
>>
>>
> I couldn't agree more, I only came on to give a few points away & see
> what there was to be worked I noted  V47...? operating as described, I
> could hear a number of stations sending 'CL ?' but the message didn't
> seem to get through. There are plenty of people (myself included) who
> struggle to catch a callsign sent once at 50 WPM + when it's not
> expected. I can only assume that most of those who did work this station
> did so by getting the callsign off the cluster & using HRD or whatever
> prog. to tune the rig to the correct freq. etc. If this is what
> contesting has become why bother? We might just as well used CQ100 or
> whatever it's called. I certainly didn't work this station or others who
> employed similar tactics.
> I omitted sending the pointless 5NN & out of ~100 QSO's only one station
> queried the report even sending 14 is a waste of time but for me that
> just about sums up CQWW contests.
>
> 73....
>
> Ken
>
> G3LVP
> _______________________________________________
> UK-Contest mailing list
> UK-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/uk-contest
>
>