I agree 100% with Rich's assessment, comments and suggestions.
I, too, have suggested that self-spotting be allowed, subject to
conditions on how often, and under what circumstances. The resistance I
have received has come from a few of the world top-10 SOAB competitors.
They are concerned that they will be at a competitive disadvantage due
to their perceived internet connectivity issues. With just a little
creative thinking, there are solutions to that problem, too. For
example, how hard would it be to set up a packet RF-to-internet gateway
for self spotting on VHF or HF ? Such things were very common in the
early days of the internet, 20 years ago. Before the internet, there was
even a 30 meter band network for interconnecting VHF packet clusters.
73,
Steve, N2IC
On 04/17/2017 04:55 AM, Rich Assarabowski wrote:
This just appeared on CQ WW
http://cqww.com/blog/cqww-2016-ssb-self-spotting-and-entrant-audio-recording
s/ . I know the intimate details of two situations from the last CQWW
where genuine friends, unrelated to the contest effort and with NO
communication with the contest operation were trying to help out and spot
their buddies, resulting in DQ letters to the contest operation. The
explanation below by KR2Q clarifies the definition of self-spotting.
To me the logic of self-spotting as defined by KR2Q is completely flawed.
It basically says that it's OK to spot a friend but not too fast, not too
often, and never when you hear his rate dropping. The assumption made
that frequent and fast spotting "indicate linkage to the mother station" is
absurd. These rules now open up the opportunity that if you don't like
someone, just spot him a few times (and no one else) and they will
automatically get DQ'ed.
It's finally time for a rules change - allow self-spotting. One way is to
have logging software send out automatic spots of yourself based on a
commonly agreed upon algorithm, e.g. every X minutes, every new QSY, etc.
The issue here is what to do about single-ops who are not connected to the
internet and those in locations without internet service. This could be
the "nail in the coffin" for the single-op category with no Internet
connection and penalizes those operations who do not have Internet service.
Incidentally, the T48K operation got DQ'ed for self-spotting and they did
NOT have Internet service in Cuba. Ask K1XX, K1EP and K1MM about that one
;)
--- Rich K1CC
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