[KCDXC] Ethics, Rules, Regulations..Oh My!

[Marty Tippin]

At 05:23 PM 1/21/2003, Mike ZooLoo wrote:
>Thanks Marty.  No..not a record setter.  First 50
>minutes might have been 12 stations, half of which
>were from California.  So what's the penalty?

Depends on the contest - for some it could be a complete DQ of your log 
(while allowing the other operators who logged you to retain credit); for 
others, it could be just a reduction in your score. The rules don't usually 
give the penalties for infractions, they just tell what the infractions are.

You could always contact the contest sponsors by e-mail and plead 
ignorance. I think you'd have a good case.

>P.S.  It is a stupid rule to limit time in a contest.
>I don't understand the reasoning, if someone can
>explain it.  If the contest is 12 hours..it should be
>12 hours.

In many contests, the time limitations are intended to help make up for 
significant differences in propagation over the wide geographical area 
where contesters exist during the course of the contest. This is especially 
true for short contests like the NAQP.

For the NAQP, the folks on the west coast experience vastly different 
propagation (within North America) relative to the east coast guys. The 
east coast will have good propagation to more of North America on the low 
bands (40/80) much sooner than the California boys, and it will stay that 
way until the contest ends. So it doesn't seem fair to let the east coast 
operators get an extra 2 hours of good low band time. You could argue that 
California gets the high bands longer, but what good is that in a domestic 
contest?

For other contests, the time limitation is designed to be an active part of 
your operating strategy -- the RTTY Roundup, for example, limits operating 
time to 24 of 30 hours for *all* entrants, and you can't take any more than 
2 breaks. That means you've got to be smart about when you take your off 
times, both relative to your local propagation *and* to the time other 
operators are going to be on the air. We sort of screwed up on our North 
Dakota trip -- the bands didn't open to Europe for about 2 hours longer 
than we expected, so we could have stayed on the air longer the previous 
evening, where there was *excellent* activity and propagation on 40 and 80m.

-NW0L