On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 10:49:24AM -0400, K3BU@aol.com wrote:
> >>Also, obviously nobody on this list has anywhere near the antennas and
> receivers and neurological filters that Yuri does if he can't understand the
> idea of guessing. I guess he's NEVER had to sit and listen while EVERY time
> the call is sent some QSB or QRM obliterates part of the call.<<
>
> Thank you for compliment to my 160m Inv Vee and roof vertical....
> Looks like it has not hit me that I could do some guessing. Like I got part
> of W7AB? call, now I will guess: was it A or which of the rest of 25
> characters? To be safe I will put all combinations in the log W7ABA through
> W7ABZ and will hit the good one somewhere. Is that how it works? I must
> have overlooked this "trick" when call gets obliterated. Gimme a break!
> If you guessed it wrong, you will lose it, period.
The scenario I have in mind is this: most of the way through the QSO, you
suddenly doubt whether or not you correctly copied part of the callsign* -
for example, was it really K3BU or maybe K4BU? At this point, you can guess
that your original hunch was right, log it and hope for the best, or decide
to ask for a fill until you've reached certainty.
With a zero QSO penalty, you are almost always better off logging the
"almost" QSO, because on average you'll probably be right half of the time,
and you suffer no penalty for guessing wrong, so it's effectively like
logging a 0.5x point QSO. With three QSO penalties, you have to guess
right in these situations more frequently than 3/4 of the time in order
to come out ahead. This makes guessing a very bad strategy for success.
* On phone, this happens to me often - the station repeats his callsign
with different phonetics in an accent that I don't quite get yet, or they
first send their call without phonetics, or maybe they're just weak and
took a QSB fade and you cannot really decide whether or not you're hearing
"QSL QSL" or something else in response to your suggestion of what you
think their callsign is....
> It is not a question of my perfection, the point was that weird things happen
> during the contest (pirates, lost logs/QSOs due to computer malfunction or
> operator error, etc.) of no fault of operator in question. 3 QSO penalty
> unjustly aggravates the reduction of scores.
Everyone in the contest is judged in exactly the same way, and you are no
more or less likely to be the victim of priates or others' poor operation
than anyone else, so what is the problem?
> Unconfirmed rumor is that there is a bunch of "guerilla" operators ganging up
> for next WW ready to work those insisting on 3 QSO penalty and not putting
> them in their logs, therefore causing massive deductions of scores.
Sure.
> Judging by some responses so far, looks like I am barking up a wrong tree, so
> I apologize for roughing up the calm waters of the reflector.
You express a strong opinion on a controversial topic and find out that
others disagree with you. Were you expecting something else to happen? :-)
--
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker@kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/
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