[UK-CONTEST] UBN failures

[Peter Hobbs]

Chris, I suspect you may have been referring to me in last week's SSB 
CC, an event I do participate in occasionally.  I log by hand and so 
it's easy and appropriate to give accurate signal reports, as well as 
record those that I receive.  If such reports are to be a mandated part 
of the exchange, then they should have some use or meaning.  To be 
driven by the limitations of automated logging aids is entirely 
unacceptable, however I suspect that many of these have options to 
properly set up signal reporting.  On Wednesday, only a few exceptional 
(mainly local) signals were perfectly readable (R5), others were 
perturbed to a greater or lesser extent by other close-in stuff and were 
generally reported as 3 (readable with considerable difficulty) or 4 
(with practically no difficulty).  I keep the AGC switched off and so 
received signal strengths are always subjective, but then so is the 
RS(T) code, as defined.  My estimates varied between S5 and S9 (fairly 
good to very strong), which is how they were reported.  Far from being 
sharp practice, this is BEST PRACTICE and should be fully supported by 
whatever logging tools people choose to use.

The alternative is to decide to do away with signal reports altogether 
of course - a pity, but I'd have no real objection -  however that would 
be up to the Contest Committee.  And I really don't see why there should 
be any difference between HF and V/UHF in this regard, especially when 
DX on 80 and 160m  is often at ESP signal levels.

73, Peter G3LET

Christopher Plummer wrote:

>David,
> 
>To add my halfpenneth.  In a recent 80m  Club contest one particular contestant was giving every contact 47 or 48, he was hoping, I suspect, that I would log 58 or even 59 and thus get a Busted contact, and he would happily claim the contact as I gave him 59, or whatever my logging program prompted.  I have spoken to a number of other contestants from this session and this competitor has done the same to them.  I regard this as sharp practice and should be curtailed by a warning, surely every contact he made would not have been readability 4?
> 
>Did anyone else get the same treatment?
> 
>Chris G8APB
> 
>
>  
>
>>Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:06:11 +0000
>>From: g3yyd at btinternet.com
>>To: UK-Contest at contesting.com
>>Subject: Re: [UK-CONTEST] UBN failures
>>
>>I see my 59 for all QSOs provoke the expected knee jerk re-action from 
>>some contesters. The HF contesters worked out long ago that the rules do 
>>not specify that the report has to be accurate. Even if the rules did, 
>>how is it enforceable? QED give 59 saves typing at both ends and hence 
>>removes a possibility of error in that part of the exchange.
>>
>>Personally I think the RS(T) report should be removed from contests and 
>>some do just that. It is the serial number and locator code that is the 
>>real exchange in a VHF+ contest. Even the locator code can come from a 
>>call history file so that leaves the serial number as being the really 
>>unique part of the exchange.
>>
>>73 David G3YYD
>>
>>PS just seen Stewart's post in similar vain.
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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