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With the CQ WW Contest Committee under fire over its handling of possible cheaters in 2008, Contest Director Bob Cox K3EST fired back this past week, arguing the committee has done its best to ferret out those who are breaking the rules in CQ WW DX.
"The committee is aware there are a few entrants who feel the need to win using any available method," said Cox, who broke his silence in a posting on the CQ-Contest reflector.
"Fortunately, these individuals are a mere handful of the contest's total entries," he added, though he acknowledged those "choosing to violate the rules are vying for high profile positions in the contest."
While Cox did not address the specifics of this year's unprecedented number of public disqualifications, he did shed more light on single operator transgressions in the CQ WW CW contest.
"We uncovered the use of two operators working contacts, multiple support operators filling a band map on the non-run band, and the use of a DX spotting system, all while claiming single operator unassisted," Cox wrote.
The message was part of a public relations offensive by K3EST, who found his leadership of the CQ WW Contest Committee questioned, mainly centering on a rules change that would allow in-person third party visits to check for cheating during CQ WW.
"As you can imagine from a practical point of view, the new rule engages only the very top contenders in multiple categories," Cox said in his first comments about the rule, which was quietly changed last week after an initial uproar about it.
Cox offered no reasons for the changes, or how it will determined that a certain entrant might come under extra scrutiny which could require a third party visit.
"By having an observer assigned to a station, we are not automatically implying that there has been illicit behavior by that entrant," Cox wrote.
"Rather, it simply suggests that they are a word-class contender and we want to allay any questions other contenders might raise about the operation," K3EST added.
"Probably the biggest impact of the rule will be some sort of deterrent," said CQ WW Contest Committee member Larry Tyree N6TR.
"Certainly this isn't an easy tool to use - but perhaps there will be fewer people operating contrary to the rules with it around," Tree added on CQ-Contest.
Meanwhile, another CQ WW Contest Committee member used the rules dustup to point the finger at contest clubs, saying they must help stop cheating as well.
"Are you happy to accept those scores from club members who you KNOW are cheating?" wrote Doug Zweibel KR2Q on CQ-Contest.
"I dare say that virtually every big contest club knows who they are, but do nothing and gladly add those scores to their total," Zweibel added, without making any specific charges.
K3EST had asked other members of the CQ WW Contest Committee not to publicly comment about the new cheating inspection rule, saying there was only one spokesman, "The Director."
Other CQ WW CC members also sent out emails to contesters who inquired about the purpose of the rule, but specifically requested that the contents of their reply not be made public.
The new rule was recently agreed to by the CQ WW Contest Committee, and was posted as part of the 2009 rules update that can be accessed from the home page of CQ Magazine.
"I recently received a report from a contester that some numbers didn't add up in their Log-Checking Report," said ARRL Contest Manager Sean Kutzko KX9X.
"After considerable review, it was determined that many calls were universally counted as "incorrect" during the log-checking process when in fact they were good calls."
It was the second major contest from 2008 that had to be re-scored because of calls that were wrongly deemed to be "bad," as back in April, the Russian DX Contest re-scored its 2008 edition.
"There was a problem with some of the reference files that were used to identify bad calls, so we re-ran the event without using those files," Kutzko told radio-sport.net.
On his contest blog at the ARRL web site, Kutzko said the changes had a "relatively minor" impact, as scores "went up slightly across the board."
While the ARRL listed two categories as having changes because of the re-scoring, World Single Op Phone Only High Power and W/VE Phone Only High Power, left out of that announcement was the fact that the new numbers resulted in a new winner of that first category.
The original 2008 IARU results had ZX5J, piloted by PP5JR, as the winner of World SSB Only High Power category. But after the re-score, KH7B operated by KH7XS is the new winner, with ZX5J in second.
KH7XS - aka Bill Kollenbaum K4XS - in fact went from third place to first in that category, as he added 200 QSO's and five mults as his score jumped 18.5% from 1,736,616 to 2,129,457 points.
PP5JR saw his score go up by only 5.3% when the new numbers were run, adding 42 contacts, but no extra multipliers.
(A closer look at the data also shows that the ARRL busted KH7XS' call in the original results, wrongly listing Kollenbaum as KH7NX.)
Another top entrant who saw his score go up by a large chunk was Jim Neiger N6TJ, who operated at ZD8Z on Ascension Island.
Neiger's original final score in 2008 was 3,200,239, but the re-scoring gave him 165 more contacts and a bump of 11% to 3,597,889, still only good for second place that year.
Most of the operations that got over 100 contacts added to their scores were HQ stations.
In the US, George Fremin K5TR gained the most contacts of any single op, adding 97 Q's for an extra 7.38% in score. Next was Dan Handa W7WA, who got an extra 95 contacts and two multipliers for a 9.48% bump.
If you want to check your score and see how different it was from your original 2008 IARU score, radio-sport.net has produced a table to do exactly that from the original and revised ARRL data.
You can find that at www.radio-sport.net/IARUrescore.htm .
