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Speak Out: DQ for cheating?

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n0ah on 2002-02-22
A good internet connection is just as important as a good amp- Thinking that outlawing clusters for contests or that everyone in a no-cluster catagory are honest, is a joke-Just give the certificate to the biggest, badest signals on the band-

VE5ZX on 2002-02-22
In order to be completely fair if cheaters are DQ'd then I hope that their Q's are removed from all contestants� logs. After all, contesting is a reciprocal sport and not only does the cheater benefit but so does the station that was contacted.

I hope that the CQ adjudicating committee will publish the technique it used to determine who cheated so that it can be peer reviewed by the contest community. Statistics is a slippery slope down which even the mighty have slide - much to their chagrin.

Probably the best thing to do is remove the assisted category. This may encourage more participants to post all of their contacts to the cluster, flooding the network and logging program bandmap buffers thus rendering packet spots almost useless. Sometimes the rules we invent to plug holes simply create bigger ones. KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid is a valuable adage.

Anonymous on 2002-02-21
"Eliminate the packet restriction. Problem solved."

I agree with that.

We should left assisted, unassisted , one radio, two radios, more radios categorries behind...there is too many categories in contests anyway!

N2MG on 2002-02-20
It's virtually impossible to PROVE cheating in radio contesting, by the very nature of the sport. In this case (packet cheating detection) the evidence is all circumstantial, no matter how convincing.

I think CQ's handling of this was right on the money.

Anonymous on 2002-02-19
Eliminate the packet restriction. Problem solved. No name calling, no lawsuits, no extra work to catch the cheats.

Technically speaking, even without packet, my computer is a second op since it does the duping ,logging and most sending. That doesn't put me in the assisted category... hmm. We should encourage the use of available technology.

de K3KO

AA1K on 2002-02-19
I run a PacketCluster node at my QTH, but for some contests I choose to run single op without packet. This past weekend's ARRL DX CW test was one of those. The node monitor was dark the entire contest.

Now, I just spent about 15 minutes doing a spot check of my contest log, and searching the node's database for spots for specific stations during the contest. If I had changed frequency to work a station (I was searching the Cabrillo file so mults weren't flagged) I checked the node to see if the station had been spotted. Not too surprisingly, a large number of these had been spotted within a half hour before my QSO.

And this was just checking the FRC PacketCluster system, which is restricted to spots from the W2-W3 area. I'm sure I would have found more coincidences if I had checked DX Summit.

Also, I was operating SOJWR (single op Just One Radio). If I had been scanning the bands with a second radio, there no doubt would have been a higher number of hits. With the sheer volume of spotting going on, and the ease of picking out a "packet pileup" while scanning the bands, it is no wonder there would be a high number of incidences where a QSO took place that followed a Packet Spot even though the station was not using packet.

So I would be very interested in the criteria used for making the decision that a non-assisted station had cheated. All mults worked within XX minutes of a packet spot? XX percentage of spots worked within YY minutes of a packet spot? Or what?

Statistics can deceive.

73/Jon AA1K

W4ZV on 2002-02-18
The question was stated as:

"What do you think about this and the CQWW committee's decision to allow these suspected packet cheaters to withdraw the logs instead of being disqualified?"

According to August 2001 CQ, this is what was actually done:

"The CQ WW Contest Committee has developed the means of extracting information supplied to us by sysops from around the world and applying it to a questionable log. By these means we found several operators in the SSB contest who did not claim the assisted category but used packet. Their calls do not appear in the score listings."

I did not read that to be the same as what was stated in the question above. It appears to me that CQ decided not to publish their scores and it was not clear that it was a voluntary choice by the participant to withdraw their log.

I strongly support CQ's decision...cheaters are very obvious to anyone who knows anything about contesting and it only hurts the reputation of the contest if nothing is done about it.

4L5A on 2002-02-18


I think CQ have to allow to use packet to every one because most of the people is use it anyway and other things might happen is if somebody dont like another guy he can just put his call in cluster
Other issue if somebody help me make me coffee Im assisted or not?

Anonymous on 2002-02-15
The guys who do the checking and catching also like to operate contests - imagine the on-air harassment and ensuing lawsuits they'd suffer from those with more money/ego than morals after a DQ. Thus DQing a lid has a built-in penalty. Having said that, I'm not on the committee and I'd like to see a few DQs. As for how they do the catching, if you have a big database of contacts and a database of the packet spots, you can pretty quickly code up a search and compare algorithm to check the correlation between Qs and spots. Data doesn't lie.

Anonymous on 2002-02-15
I think these stations should not be DQed but seperated in a new category 'Cheaters' or 'Lids'. There are numerous (even so called 'good contesters') who are constantly doing self-spotting etc. Look at this excerpt from european DXC ...

3509.0 OQ4UN 2-Dec-2001 2326Z <on4un>
14093.0 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2152Z <on4un>
7036.5 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2138Z <on4un>
7036.6 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2137Z <on4un>
7036.7 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2136Z for usa <on4un>
3582.4 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2118Z <on4un>
21089.0 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2058Z <on4un>
14082.4 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 2022Z rtty <on4un>
14082.3 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 1837Z <on4un>
14081.0 OQ4UN 11-Nov-2001 1735Z <on4un>
14185.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 1244Z oper: JA1IST <on4un>
21255.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 1135Z oper JA1IST <on4un>
21356.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 1037Z <on4un>
28507.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 0932Z oper: JA1IST <on4un>
28509.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 0932Z sri freq correction <on4un>
28520.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 0824Z op: JA1IST <on4un>
21349.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 0734Z op:ja1ist <on4un>
14186.0 OT0T 12-Nov-2000 0553Z operator JA1ISX <on4un>
7061.0 OT0T 11-Nov-2000 2030Z contest (op JA1IST) <on4un>
7062.0 OT0T 11-Nov-2000 1653Z ja1ist operator <on4un>
14201.0 OT0T 11-Nov-2000 1255Z operator JA1IST <on4un>
28459.0 OT0T 11-Nov-2000 1019Z <on4un>
28432.0 OT0T 11-Nov-2000 0806Z <on4un>
14225.0 OT0T 11-Nov-2000 0753Z <on4un>

in the same time (from nov 2000 till today) there have been only ** three ** normal DX spots from that station ...
Of course thats only one example. You might find a similar situation with most 'big guns' ...

73, Anonymous

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