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Speak Out: A post-contest accuracy report for cluster spotting?

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Anonymous on 2008-07-24
I'm all for spoff spotting. Contesters today are too dependent of the packet cluster. Why is the cluster so active even on contests where it is not allowed. Spot the fake ones and make the wennies work for it and let the real contesters earn the contacts. But hey, that's just my opinion.

k6iii on 2008-04-05
I do a lot of spotting on the DX clusters during HF contests. I'm not a big gun station and don't kid myself that I might someday be a top gun. I am, however, a member of a large west coast contest club. How can I help the group achieve their goal of big/biggest scores? I could just participate and add my moderate score to the club aggregate or I could provide alerts to the group via spots of multipliers I hear. I will also spot the group's running stations and members I hear in order to increase their visibility to the contesting world. I think it adds value to the overall experience. So I have set up my hot keys to make it easy to post a spot. Some folks will find so many spots annoying or of little value. I beg to differ.

I must of made a zillion spots in WPX SSB recently (did you notice?). With so many unique calls on the air, practically half the stations I tune across will be a multiplier of some sort or the other. Someone using a fake call sign (US2LID) did object by posting a spot with my call telling me to stop spotting. I actually did stop for a while. I discussed this with several club members and without exception they said how useful they found my spotting and to keep it up.

Do I make mistakes spotting? You bet I do, but not on purpose. I sometimes fat-finger the keyboard and hit that Enter key too quickly. I am annoyed with myself when that happens and endeavor to do better.

My Opinions:
Self spotting should not be done. Many contest sponsors state this in their rules.

Fake spots are outrageous behavior and should not be done.

Comments like "when CW" or "When 17m" etc are a waste of time. I truely doubt that the DX/Contest station is looking at these comments.

OK.... I'm off my soapbox.... no flames, please.

PY3FJ on 2008-04-03
I have means to see who spotted me, but if the spotter sends a wrong call (just changing one letter or number) I can't see it, because isn't my call. I just feel a wrong spot when the dupes beggin to appear. So we spent precious time saying -we contacted before- instead of making contacts. This could be a spotter's mistake, but also could be malicious, trying to stop the pile-up.
Jac - PY3FJ @ PP5JD on the CQ WPX SSB Contest

dl8obf on 2008-03-31
I actually have my boubts that such a blacklist would work. Those guys who deliberately post wrong spots could be do so using arbitrary callsigns.

But obviously there must be such guys who deliberately spot wrong callsigns, or how can you misspell 30 and 3O ? During the WPX there were lots of these which are difficult to catch from the glimpsy CRT-screens :-(.

Vy 73
Uwe, DL8OBF

NF1R on 2008-03-22
It would be great to be able to blacklist certain spotters so that their lousy spots don't show up on the bandmap. The busted spots are often obvious, so why not let us filter out the idiots? Or is this feature already available?

wy7i on 2008-03-16
A complete waste of time. Haven't we got better things to do?

N7RQ on 2007-10-29
Am I imagining things, or do I really keep finding large US contest stations on recently-posted DX freqs during contests? Hope this is just coincidence, but it sure happened a lot during the CQWWSSB test this past weekend. Mistakes happen, but some mistakes happen on purpose. Perhaps spotlights and analyses are good things.

k1uo on 2007-10-26
Wow!!! Now we have cluster police too? What's it all coming to? Last I knew it was the responsibility of the Cluster user to verify the accuracy of a posted call if he/she intends to use the spot for a contest score or mult. otherwise just randomly work the Callbook.
The self spotting abuse by some Contest entrants, however, is a seperate toxic topic.

Lessrulesmorefun on 2007-10-21
A dumb idea.

K6VVA on 2007-10-05
Why not? Use technology to its fullest.

Just, umh, err, ahhhhh...DO IT!!!

73...

Rick, K6VVA

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