I'm delighted to hear a mostly polite discussion regarding the SO vs. SOA
controversy without too much reference to our obvious personality
deficincies for choosing one category over another.
The sub-discussion regarding cheating is also of interest. I feel that
for now, the best deterrent is peer pressure. This is something that has
worked well for many years in our community. I'm reminded of an incident
years ago. One of the small clubs I belonged to was going all out in the
ARRL DX. We were hearing each other from time to time throughout the
weekend and checking progress. One of our ops noticed that another of our
club members who was supposedly SO (no packet) seemed to be showing up in
pileups with regularity right after it was spotted. The "SO" was not
connected to the cluster, and was one of those guys that only turns on his
packet stuff when he was using it (lightning fears). On a hunch, our
vigilant op tried to connect to the "SO" on our cluster freq. Low and
behold, his rig was on and the connect went thru. He sent him a one liner
about "checking to see if he was around" and disconnected. You can decide,
but I'm pretty sure he didn't "forget to turn the packet off". Anyway, for
the rest of the weekend we didn't hear him in as many pileups.
Seems to me with all the clubs I've belonged to, the rule of thumb is
whatever the group finds acceptable. My current club makes a point of
talking about what you can and cannot do within the rules, and I never
recall anyone saying "Yeah, BUT...." in these discussions.
I believe we can all do our part to make it clear that we want nothing to
do with shady operating practices. It sure can't hurt.
73 de Tom, N2GQS
Tom@utd.com
(SOA in most of the big ones)
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