I don't claim to be an expert on SDR technology. I am pretty familiar with the
RBN.
I'm curious on how a contest sponsor checks for certain violations , such as
transmitting two signals at the same time, when a station is in a category
where they can transmit only one signal at a time? An example of this would be
SO, SOA, or M/S ( that would have more than one station on a run band , using a
lockout). The multiplier station on another band would be allowed the transmit
at the same time the way the rules are written.
Say for example I'm operating CQWW DX CW at PJ2XXX in the M/S category. I have
three stations setup. I have two radios on the run band, one that calls CQ and
another one that tunes the band and interleaves QSO's. A lockout device is used
that prevents me from transmitting two signals on that band at the same time
The 3rd radio is used on another band to work only multipliers and adhering to
the 10 minute rule.
So the 1st minute of the contest I work 6 QSO's , three on the run frequency ,
two on my other transmitter on the same band and one multiplier on another
band. When I submit my log to the contest sponsor I have six QSO's logged as
0000z. Three of my contacts are on 14005 and the other two are on 14025 and
14050. The multiplier radio QSO is on 7005.
How does the contest sponsor determine if I screwed up with my lockout system?
I don't think the RBN logs down to the second? I checked reversebeacon.net and
it logs down to the minute. If they listen to a SDR recording are they going to
listen to every contact a top scoring station makes, that uses this technique
heavily, to make sure they didn't screw up. Plus what's stopping someone from
massaging their log and changing a contact to their run frequency? It wouldn't
be too hard to change a contact from 14025 to 14005 and have the log checkers
catch that. Certain contests don't even require frequency information. You
could technically log all your 20 meter contacts as 14000. Are they going to
check the RBN or SDR to make sure I didn't do this to try to hide something?
I downloaded a log for a station for a recent contest that was multi-single
that I suspected was using multiple transmitters with a lockout system to
figure out what they were doing. According to the frequency information in
their log they made 120 contacts on their 2nd run band radio the first hour of
the contest while maintaining a 3-4 QSO rate on their run frequency. I haven't
looked at the whole log yet but from what I skimmed thru so far they were
maintaining at least a 50 per hour rate for the whole contest on their 2nd run
band radio. Is this possible considering interstation interference issues you
would have to deal with. They must have some pretty good and narrow bandpass
filters.
With volunteer's doing the log checking for most contests do they even have the
time to check logs down to this detail. Plus it gets even more complicated
when you have to check a M2X or MM log. My guess is NO.
I have only touched the surface. How do you prove some is not using a remote
receiver or has a relief operator unless someone walks in and catching someone
doing this? Only a fraction of the cheaters are being caught. It's pretty sad
what contesting has become with the new technology we have today.
Jeff KU8E
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