> I'm hesitant. So much of being a successful contester is knowing when to
> go get the hard double mult on 40, or when to put which radio on which
> band, etc. Do we really want to make that all transparent to all
> competitors? It would be a little like allowing the other team into your
> huddle.
[SNIP]
> for any two big stations. Even then, I'm sure some folks might not want
> their specific strategic or tactical choices to be visible. Perhaps a
> station could be empowered to decide what info is made available -- QSO
> rate info, for example, but no band info.
May be arguments such as these impede the evolution of contesting and should
be laid to rest. It has not been demonstated that log analysis, historical
or real-time, can reveal contest secrets. If I were to venture a guess I
suspect that most of the relevant contest secrets have been revealed in the
many articles that have been written over the years.
A lot of a contestant's skill resides in his 'tacit knowledge' i.e.
knowledge acquired over time through trial and error. Such knowledge
incorporates information specific to the local QTH and setup that it is not
particularly relevant elsewhere. Only a very faint signature of a
contestant's skill and technique is traceble through log analysis.
A Next BIG Step in contesting will be 'contests within a major contest'
where small communities of contesters with a common interest experiment with
the new rules and technologies with a contest without interfering with the
objectives of the major contest. For a glimpse at this idea have a look at
"The 24-hour DX Contest Challenge" (A proposal for a contest within a
contest ) by Pete Smith, N4ZR and Mike Gilmer, N2MG available at
http://www.contesting.com/articles/401 and the results of the survey on the
same topic at http://www.contesting.com/survey/93.
Isn't real-time scoring a techique that could/is experimented with by a
community of interested contestants while playing with an existing contest
without interfering with the sponsors objectives? Perhaps if we had many
such groups pushing the boundaries of contesting we might be able to breath
new life into our sport before it dies.
Syl
Sylvan Katz - VE5ZX
Saskatoon, SK
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