[RMVHF] Possible solution

[Steve London]

Nate Duehr wrote:
> 
> The articles he writes that bug me are:
> 
> - Articles telling others how to behave ethically in a contest... these 
> strike me as wrong, considering they're coming from "on high" from one of the
> leaders of a winning team. 

Okay, here I go sticking my nose where some of you think it doesn't belong, but ...

While you may not agree exactly with where to draw the line, I'm sure there are 
certain behaviors that the vast majority of the VHF crowd would agree are not 
ethical, either for VHF DXing or VHF contesting. Who better than to bring this 
out into the open, but a respected leader in the VHF world, such as Gene ?

> Many of his readers do not know he's involved
> with the Grid Pirates -- but someone's got to write the articles.

What's wrong with that ?  Who better than to write the VHF column in QST ?

Gene is not one of the VHF contest log adjudicators. He has no influence on the 
handling and scoring of the logs. The ARRL is very careful to avoid 
conflicts-of-interest in this area. As an example, those of you who read the 
ARRL Sweepstakes writeups may have noticed that I was the author of the QST 
writeup for the Phone Sweepstakes this year, while I was author of the CW 
Sweepstakes writeup the previous year. This change was made specifically to 
avoid any perception of impropriety, since I was vying for a top finish in the 
CW Sweepstakes. Another point you should know - the authors of the QST contest 
writeups are rarely the same people as those who adjudicate the logs. The 
purpose of the QST author is to simply take the results, as determined by the 
adjudicator, and present them in an interesting manner for publication.

> The other
> winning teams could submit interesting things to read too, I suppose.

And, knowing Gene, if someone else were to submit interesting things, Gene would 
print them - even things that contradicted his point of view.

> 
> - Articles where he's obviously been given access to raw logs to write 
> statistical analysis.  If he's going to see other's logs, I should too. That
> one bugs me more than his ethical opinions, because it always seemed
> unethical to me in the first place.  Especially coming from someone who's won
> first place, for a play on words.

That is a very interesting point. As editor of the VHF column in QST, Gene may 
very well have access to logs for research purposes. There is a raging 
discussion going on now on the CQ-Contest reflector about open contest logs. 
Currently, the CQ Magazine-sponsored CQWW (an HF contest) does have open logs 
that everyone can view (www.cqww.com/ssblogs or www.cqww.com/cwlogs). With a 
recent ARRL Board of Directors decision, it is possible that the ARRL will also 
have open contest logs in the future. I urge you to express your opinion on this 
matter to your ARRL Director, ARRL Contest Advisory Committee representative and 
ARRL VHF-UHF Advisory Committee representative.


"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"

73,
Steve, N2IC