[VHFcontesting] QST_ June contest write up

[Rusty Boling]

Sorry for the typos on the original post..I was at work and being pulled many different ways and have no opportunity to go back and proof-read everything that I send out from there.  It usually takes 3-4 hours to type up what I sent out due to my attention being needed elsewhere at least a couple hundred times in that time period and I usually just get frustrated and send out what I can, as I can.  At any rate, the topic is something that people that are affected by it feel very strongly about and I am sure there is a better way of doing it or rewriting the rules to make the "spirit" of the contest be reflected in the "letter" of the rules.  If there is something that can be exploited then there will definitely be someone willing to do the exploiting.  You don't have to look any further than any other contest, athletic event, any form of political system, any form of business...which pretty much boils down to anyone that's into something for money, power, or credit.

     One solution may be to have a sub-contest within a contest and if you have someone independent and willing to sponsor that "sub-contest" you could also submit your rover logs (and other station logs as check logs) to that entity that can scrutinize the logs submitted to see if grid circling, circle jerking, pack roving, and captive roving techniques were used to attain the claimed score.  Again, I am not a rover and don't have any desire to be, but I like working rovers and would like to work more of them and I personally would have no problem submitting a check log to a 2nd entity to help settle this issue and there has got to be someone out there with the resources to pull something like this off and that sponsor could get some publicity/advertising out of it too and post all the logs submitted online for all eyes to see since that is current issue at hand.  I am still yet waiting for Santa Claus to exploit the north pole with all the tremendously close gridsquares
 if he can get some of his elves (also known as the Garland Grid Trotters {not to be confused with the Harlem Globe Trotters}) to posse up and systematically circle the pole on sleigh to slay the competition.  Yes, it sounds foolish, but it makes a point at exploitation and how just a few guys can team up, drive around together as a team, have nearly or exclusively all the same bands as a team, and exclusively work one another and win without ever really needing a respectable station capable of working any distance (not that it can't) and being completely and totally self-serving other than making a few qsos here and there just to make it look more legit.  You can do all this and still fall within the "letter" of the rules, but not within the "spirit" of the contest.

     Grid circling, pack roving, and captive roving sounds like it would be as boring as heck!  I can't imagine doing the exact same thing every year, going through the motions, keeping up with the technicalities of circling at every grid corner with the same stations over and over for 33 hours.  Sounds about as tough as a mall security guard working the night shift making his rounds every night pushing a button or signing in at every checkpoint just to prove he was there at a certain time and on schedule and having 5 other security guards walking or driving directly behind him duplicating everything that he is doing just seconds behind him.  Sure, they are going though the motions but are they accomplishing anything with all of them being in the same place at the same time with their eyes on one another all the time playing follow the leader?  Now imagine them doing that with 10 handheld radios talking to one another and to only one another and each guard talking on each
 radio at each checkpoint within the mall once on each radio to every other guard at each of the 3 closest checkpoints plus the one he is at himself.  Once the other shift of guards that doesn't play follow the leader and tries to keep from having all their resources tied up all in one place hears about how the night shift guards are doing tries to find out how the night shift guys are getting away with such poor security practices tries to have the check logs and a copy of all the radio traffic for the nightshift pulled, he runs into resistance and no one will allow him to see how nightshift gets such high numbers of checks done and supposedly has been talking about their checks all night long...but he finally figures it out...all the security guards on night shift never get out of sight of one another, they follow eachother as a team, and you can't hear them on the radio log/recorder because they all have their antennas off their radios as who needs an antenna when you
 are within whispering distance.  Needless to say, he is pretty upset when the nightshift leader gets the "guard of the month" award, then the 4 other nightshift guards all get the award on a rotating basis even though the guards on the other shifts work just as hard but are spread out over a larger area looking for problems to solve instead of looking at one another.  The nightshift guards never acknowledge what they do differently even though they solve no problems and are never seen by the public like the other shifts do/are and they insist that there is no reason why the other shifts show resentment or curiosity as to why nightshift looks so good on paper but nowhere else and there is no evidence that nightshift did anything all night long other than the testimony/logs of their own and no outside sources to verify their story.

     I hope the story was worth the time and gives the circlers/captives/packers an idea of the resentment that they have encouraged by exploitation of the rules.
Rusty