[UK-CONTEST] Contest Signal Quality

[Peter Hobbs]

Brilliant idea Olof - a variant of eBay feedback perhaps, which could be 
published for all to see.
Any ideas for a sponsor anyone?

73, Peter G3LET


Olof Lundberg wrote:

>Clive,
>I spent quite a few hours on the air over the weekend and I found fewer
>horrible signals than ever on the bands. Back in the 1960's when I was
>fairly active in contests the quality/purity of cw signals was much worse
>than today. Having said that I still agree with you. Contest sponsors have a
>responsibility in terms of maintaining and improving the standards in the
>hobby. As you say, with SDRs and recording it is easy to get absolute proof
>of signal quality. These SDRs are high-quality measurement tools. A basic
>generous occupied bandwidth profile should be agreed, culprits exceeding
>that should be warned and, if the offense is repeated, be DQ'd.
>I have actually more of an issue with rogue behaviour in general. Doing most
>of my occasional contesting from a qth with LP and thin invisible strings in
>the shrubs I do a lot of listening and S&P. It is obvious to me that the QRO
>guys generally and some more than others are just taking it for granted that
>they can run over whatever there is on a frequency they want to use. A
>modern variant of that is cluster/skimmer spots where the QRO folks just
>jump in without any listening at all, taking for granted 1) that the spot is
>correct and 2) that they are so loud that they will dominate.
>There is not a simple solution to this but again I think that contest
>sponsors/organizers have an important responsibility. The problem is that
>there are cultural and soft behavioural issues involved and it would be
>difficult to write tight rules for that. Here is a suggestion though: what
>if contest sponsors invited comments/critique on operator standards and
>issued 1) fair-play awards to ops that get plenty of consistently good
>reviews and 2) warnings (or hints/suggestions) to those ops that are
>behaving badly? A requirement for a fair-play award would be widely
>dispersed support and similarly (but opposite) for the bad guy warning?
>
>73 de Olof G0CKV
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com
>[mailto:uk-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Clive GM3POI
>Sent: 21 February 2012 13:31
>To: UK-Contest at contesting.com
>Subject: [UK-CONTEST] Contest Signal Quality
>
>OK seeing I started the subject up in my last e-mail I'll kick off with some
>of my initial thoughts. 
>1.  The culprits producing wider than considered reasonable signals  know
>fully what they are doing in order to drive down the scores of other
>competitors.  
>2. Contest organisers should include a catch all type rule about signal
>quality, which they could then act on, without one FA can be done.
>3. SDR receivers would provide any evidence of poor signals together with
>recordings.
>4. There can be no justification for a wide signal in a substantially narrow
>band mode.
>73 Clive GM3POI
>
>
>
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