[UK-CONTEST] Contest UBN's

[Don Field]

Peter et al

First off, UBN is CQ terminology - Unique (for which you would only be
penalised if it was unique because clearly broken), Busted (speaks for
itself) and Not in Log (also speaks for itself).

For almost all contests worldwide the assumption, unless there is strong
evidence to the contrary (e.g. a consistent pattern), is that the receiving
end is in error. To penalise both ends means that 50% of penalties are,
arguably, unwarranted. The current situation means that only a very small
proportion are unwarranted.

The system can never be 100%, but I would argue that it doesn't have to be.
What matters is to achieve the right order of finishing. If a disputed QSO
wouldn't affect that, it is surely immaterial. I don't consider it
appropriate to ask already hard-pressed volunteers to trawl through hours
of recordings (with the possible exception of ARRL, RSGB manages more
contests than any other body I can think of). The possible exception is
where a significant change of finishing order would happen (e.g. trophy
recipients). It is rare for a finish to be so close. In Moscow (last WRTC)
it really was a "level playing field" and the top two were within 3 QSOs/1
mult of each other in 3000 QSOs. In "normal" contesting that is rare.

Most contesters end up with an error rate of 3-5% but expect the Contest
Cttee to have an error rate of 0%. I don't consider that reasonable :-)
(find me a football referee with an error rate of 0%!)

Don G3XTT

On 18 April 2012 15:20, Peter Burden <peter.burden at gmail.com> wrote:

> Having returned to contesting (vhf/uhf only) about 9 months ago after a gap
> of many years, I too find the topic of UBNs interesting. Clearly the
> widespread use of computers has made log checking much easier even to the
> extent of automatically e-mailing the "miscreants" with the details.
>
> I'm strongly of the opinion that
>
> (1) There should be no attempt to apportion blame. If attempts are made to
> apportion blame the adjudicator's task becomes far more onerous especially
> once there is an appeals mechanism in place.
>
> (2) Following on, both operators should loose credit for the QSO. If the
> UBN is detected comparing a check log with a competing operator's log then,
> clearly, only the competing operator would loose credit.
>
> (3) There should be no attempt to apply penalties any more than loss of the
> points/multipliers for the QSO.
>
> (4) Lost/error QSO statistics should be included in the published results.
> I have seen this in recent DARC results - e.g.
> http://www.darc.de/referate/ukw-funksport/iaru-r1-contest-2011/uhf-2011/
>
> Under these circumstances we all know where we stand. If a station
> consistently gives out incorrect information then he will loose a lot and
> his QSO partners a little, if a station consistently mislogs incoming
> information he will loose a lot and his QSO partners a little, so operators
> with big problems will quickly feel motivated to sort things out.
>
> I certainly wouldn't welcome a situation in which we felt we all had to
> record the contest and then spend time crawling up the recording to check
> every exchange in case it got posted as a UBN - or using the information to
> correct one of our receiving errors. I know the latter is against the rules
> and of course nobody would do that - would they?
>
> 73 Peter Burden G3UBX
>
> PS - What does the abbreviation UBN stand for?
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