[NLRS] dupe sheet specs

[John P. Toscano]

Dr. Gerald N. Johnson wrote:
> Classic dupe sheets contained only call.
> http://www.arrl.org/contests/forms/dupesht.pdf There's a new dupe sheet
> for each band and mode. For a rover, that would be at least for each
> grid. At 10 GHz where moves are sub grid, I'd interpret that to be at
> each location.
> 
> The dupe sheet is not to be made the day after the contest, but is a
> live part of operating (with paper) with each contact entered as made so
> that a glance at the dupe sheet can tell if the station has been worked
> before. Its often faster than computer software, because a glance is
> faster than typing in a call. For very active contests the dupe sheet is
> printed on 11 x 17 paper.

This sort of dupe sheet works well for HF contests, Field Day, and even 
most VHF/UHF contests except for the existence of rovers.  You need only 
one sheet, unless different bands count as unique Q's, in which case you 
need one sheet per band, and unless different modes count as unique Q's 
(such as CW vs. Phone), in which case the number of sheets doubles.

In a VHF/UHF contest as a rover, operating a few bands from a few 
locations, the rover could have one sheet or set of sheets per grid/band 
pair they activate, so that dupes are detected right away.  If there are 
a lot of bands and a lot of grids, the number of sheets needed goes up 
dramatically.

The huge problem for VHF/UHF contests is when the fixed stations work 
the rovers, because the fixed station that works (for example) 5 
different rovers, each in 8 different grids, on up to 10 different bands 
would need to have 8 x 10 = 80 different dupe sheets.  (Maybe even more 
if the 8 grids activated by Rover "A" weren't the same 8 grids activated 
by Rover "B" and so on.  If the 5 rovers in this example actually 
activate a total of 16 different grids among them, and they bring 10 
bands along, we're now talking 16 x 10 different dupe sheets, most of 
which will have almost nothing written on them.)

Even ignoring the rovers, in a VHF/UHF contest where fixed stations 
worked only fixed stations (for example), if the fixed station ran on 10 
different bands, they'd need 10 different dupe sheets, which is possible 
but awkward.

In the 10 GHz and Up Cumulative Contest, at least the way we do it 
around here, the paper dupe sheet kept during the contest becomes 
totally impractical, because (a) the rovers may activate 30 or more 
sub-grids over the course of the weekend, and (b) the "fixed" stations 
usually operate from anywhere from 1 to 4 different fixed locations over 
the 4 days of the contest, and if EITHER end moves 10 miles or more, 
that is a new (non-duplicate) location pair.  The only "saving grace" is 
that most operators work only one band, a few operate two, and up to 
this point in time, I don't think any of us have gone to more bands than 
that.  In any case, the number of sheets that would be needed grows out 
of control.

As far as I know, the only dupes we've actually had in the 10G contest 
occurred when one side was a truly fixed station (KM0T stayed home the 
whole time), and the rovers activated a sub-grid with him on one day of 
the weekend, and on another day, activated a different location within 
the same sub-grid, so it didn't occur to us until later that there was a 
dupe with him.  We rely on memory and careful site selecton to avoid the 
vast majority of dupes, and the computerized sort & search after the 
fact works well to catch any remaining ones (if any).

W0JT