[WriteLog] Uniques in CQWW and CQ/RJ WPX RTTY Contests

[Tom Frenaye]

On June 21st there was a message from: "Eddie Schneider" <edlyn@california.com> posted on the Writelog reflector with text from Glenn Vinson, W6OTC, the Contest Director (of both contests I assume) regarding the handling of uniques in the CQWW and CQ/RJ WPX RTTY contests.

In the middle of his detailed message was a paragraph that said:

>> Where a unique is also a bad call, all seem to agree that it ought to be
>> excluded from a score.  Examples include calls that are not legal or that do not
>> in fact exist.  For some contesters, this is as far as the inquiry ought to go,
>> meaning that unless a unique is also classified as "bad", it should have no
>> impact on the score.  Some, including the ARRL, are prepared to go even farther
>> and to allow a "bad" call to be counted so long as it is inaccurate by only one
>> character (as determined by comparison to a callsign database) in the logged
>> callsign.  I fail to see the logic in this policy.  Is it sufficient to say
>> that, "This contact should count because I almost copied the call correctly"?

A quick look suggests no one corrected the incorrect information above.  There is nothing in the checking of any ARRL contest that allows a bad callsign to be counted if it is off by one character.   If you get the call wrong the contact is not allowed.  Period.

A personal comment: As for the discussion over uniques, I find it hard to understand why a valid QSO would not be allowed by the checking process.  If the callsign is wrong, toss it out.   If QSO didn't happen, confirm it by getting a log extract from the other station.  Don't penalize someone in the contest for working a station that didn't make enough QSOs to show up multiple times in other logs.  I'm especially critical that uniques are not allowed when there is nothing in the rules indicating that's what happens in the log checking.

Sorry not to have commented on the ARRL log checking issue earlier, someone just brought it to my attention a few days ago - I'm not a regular subscriber to the Writelog reflector.  

                        73 Tom
 

=====
e-mail: k1ki@arrl.org   ARRL New England Division Director  http://www.arrl.org/
Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444


--
WWW:                      http://www.writelog.com/
Submissions:              writelog@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  writelog-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-writelog@contesting.com