[UK-CONTEST] Ending times etc.

[Gordon Brown]

Why on earth are so many people getting excited about starting and ending 
times?  The most anyone is going to gain is two QSO’s – one at the start and one 
at the end.  OK it’s almost cheating but it’s by no means the only nor most 
profitable way people cheat in contests.  

It is pointless pointing the finger at stations where one doubts the power level 
they are using because they are obviously going to deny it and it would take 
quite an effort to prove otherwise.  Just tune over the band during a contest 
and one can have serious doubts about some stations.  I have been experimenting 
with a way of detecting if a linear amplifier is being used with some unproved 
success but there are ways of negating my findings and what is wrong with using 
a linear to boost 5 Watts to 100 Watts?  So I have been wasting my time?
During the last CC Data contest I had a local station, about two miles from me, 
blocking my RX over 5kHz and another about the same distance an acceptable S9.  
I know one was running 100Watts and I know which one was pushing his luck.
Assuming a club has all logs sent to a central point where they can be edited 
before being submitted.  The advantage in doing this is that they could ensure 
all members work each other and errors in received calls can be checked although 
I doubt they do that.  Lets assume G1AA is a member of my club and I know he is 
not in the contest.  One of my club members G1BB, who is active, works G1CC and 
we know that G1CC is a member of a usually high scoring club.  All I have to do 
is edit the log of G1BB  and change G1CC to G1AA.  Hey presto our club has 
gained 2 QSO’s and our nearest challenger has lost 1 QSO a net gain to my club 
of 6 QSO’s..  

All this makes me wonder why we are so concerned about starting and ending times 
to the nearest microsecond?
 
73
Gordon.