Lets face the facts of today's contesting. The situation is no longer a
guy with 100 watts and a dipole, carefully tuning the bands, carefully
copying frequent I.D.ing, and logging on paper.
Today, a full-on contester has
--- That obscenity of ham radio, the CW Skimmer, no need to even know code.
--- Internet spots.
--- Remote receiver feeds of Skimmer-like reports.
--- Several radios on-site to work many bands at once.
--- Several KW with yagis simultaneously pointed at several directions.
---- Path prediction software.
--- Ability to listen to his own station from remote recv sites world wide.
--- Automated contesting software that sticks in the call and exchange for
the operator.
And more I dont know about.
A Running contest station need I.D. ONLY ONCE on one set freq., the Skimmer
picks him up and spots him, other contesters know the call sign and do not
need even to ever hear it over the air, and the exchange is automated
(except for a few Russians), too. Thus, a modern contester calls a Runner
once, hears only his own call sign back, and logs the contact. No need for
anything else to be xmitted, altho some still hold on to the minimum
xmitted. Soon, I expect to see another Skimmer that keeps a running time
line for sequential serial numbers to automate that exchange (at 1432.137
GMT, K1xxx sent serial number 9077, so if you work that guy at 1432.138z,
you are serial number 9078). Hey, all that data could be recorded and
filled in after the contest, but within five days, hee hee.
All of us asking for I.D.s all the time are just thought fossils of a
by-gone pre-computer era. I just hope my computer will, at least, send me
a message to tell me how my call sign did in the last fully automated
contest.
73,
--
Charly, HS0ZCW
"When the human is replaced by the computer, only the computer will have
fun." I said that.
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