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In many ways, 2008 was much like any other year when it came to contesting. There were pitched battles on the bands, as well as pitched battles after the contests ended over whether some ops might not be following the rules.
There was the "Chat Room" controversy; the no "59" outcry after WPX SSB; the almost nuclear war over CW Skimmer; and the back and forth over whether contest logs should be made public on the internet.
After a vow by the ARRL to toughen log checks, March 2008 brought the first public disqualifications in the IARU Contest since 1980, as 9A9A, HA1DAC and UT5UGR were DQ'd from the 2007 IARU test.
The three were "disqualified for submitting logs deemed incompatible with the category entered," read the simple writeup in QST Magazine.
(Back in the 1980 IARU, several stations were DQ'd for "excessive duplicates," a throwback to the days of handwritten logs.)
2008 also saw the first real controversy over the use of internet chat rooms to find contest contacts, that in the CQ 160 tests. Reaction was swift and overwhelmingly negative from the contest community.
"Soliciting QSOs using any medium should be considered cheating. Period," wrote Dez Watson G3WW to radio-sport.net.
Those voices were heard, because not even a year later, use of chat rooms is now specific grounds for disqualification.
"The use of any so-called “Chat Rooms” via the internet or similar means for communication between stations or operators during the contest period is strictly prohibited," reads the new CQ 160 rule.
The hardest fought battle over new rules though came in relation to VE3NEA's CW Skimmer, the controversial CW decoding software program.
Some wanted it banned altogether, but CQ WW led the way by making it okay for Assisted and Multi-Op entries.
Still, no matter how the rules or the log reviews have been tightened in 2008, the perception remains that people are still cheating and still getting away with it.
Some have gotten frustrated and moved on to other endeavors, like Brett Graham of VR2BG contest fame, who let his ham radio license expire last year, frustrated by questionable contest tactics in Asia.
"The level of what I would consider to be unacceptable behavior in radiosport around here I now believe is far greater than I previously thought," Graham told radio-sport.net.
Graham recounted one effort to convince a major contest committee to act on post-contest log massage.
"It was brought to the attention of those who needed to know," Graham said. "They did nada."
"The reticence to upset cheaters in contests I can't understand."
With the contest committees not doing enough in the eyes of many, some contesters were again moved to do their own public contest log reviews on the CQ-Contest reflector.
A few months ago, Toni Linden OH2UA publicly accused Emil Balen 9A9A of cheating in the 2007 CQ WW CW contest, just months after Balen had been DQ'd from the IARU.
"Running pileup on 3525 and 7025 and working mults on 80M and S&P some Qs’ like DF0HQ on 80M and N3RS on 40M, not bad!" Linden wrote, adding in excerpts from 9A9A's log for 9A1A as evidence.
Linden's efforts were hailed by Tonno Vahk ES5TV, who a year earlier had publicly accused Valery Komarov RD3AF of cheating in CQ WW with a similar post.
Vahk used OH2UA's 2008 complaints about 9A9A to criticize the CQ WW Contest Committee for not acting against obvious cheats.
"There are packet cheaters on top places in several categories. We have seen cheaters exposed without doubt (working wrongly spotted calls etc), that has not helped to bring them down," Vahk complained, as he defended his right to call out ops that might be breaking the rules.
"That is the only way we can really help the (contest) sponsors," Vahk added.
"Do they want to be helped? I don't know. Honestly I have lost faith in them for now."
For the most part, contest committees avoid that type of publicity at all costs, by quietly taking questionable logs and re-classifying them to a different category, labeling them as checklogs or just having some logs disappear altogether.
That last option is what evidently happened in the 2004 CQ WW CW Contest with the 3V8BB entry of Hrane Milosevic YT1AD, who won the 2007 CQ WW CW test and has the top single operator claimed score in 2008 CQ WW CW as well.
Back in 2004, Milosevic posted a score of over 17 million on the 3830 reflector for the CW test, which was by far tops in the world.
The 3V8BB log was submitted, but when one looks at the CQ WW CW results for 2004, YT1AD's score is nowhere to be found.
There was no mention of him being disqualified or that 3V8BB was a checklog. The log simply disappeared without explanation.
A source on the CQ WW Contest Committee confirms that Milosevic was in fact disqualified in 2004, but that it was never publicly announced.
"The log was terrible," said this CQ WW CC member, who indicated that the entry resembled that of a multi-operator log.
In truth, public disqualifications in ham radio contests are really fairly rare, even for major tests like CQ WW CW, where there have only been a handful since 2000.
While only one DQ was publicly announced in 2006, a CQ WW Contest Committee member told radio-sport.net that as many as ten different entries were actually disqualified that year, most of them from Eastern Europe.
While someone with a lot of time might be able to figure out who was checklogged or moved to another category in certain contests, that hasn't been true in the ARRL DX contests for five years, as checklogs haven't been listed since the results of the 2003 ARRL CW test.
The last time there was a publicly announced DQ in ARRL DX was in 2000, when HG1S earned the dubious distinction of being disqualified in both ARRL CW and ARRL SSB.
No explanation was given in QST Magazine for the disqualifications. One note on that is the HG1S Multi-op team in 2000 included HA1DAC, who was DQ'd in the 2007 IARU.
The contest that has taken the most public stance on DQ's is most likely the EU HF Championships run by the Slovenia Contest Club.
While CQ WW and ARRL DX have DQ'd only a handful of stations since 2000, the EUHFC has been very aggressive in not only issuing DQ's, but also in publicly re-classifying logs, or announcing which entries have been "not classified."
The highest profile DQ came in 2007, when RD3AF was knocked out for "excessive number of unverifiable QSO."
The idea of requiring a full audio recording of a contest by top scoring stations is nothing new, but it has now gained a foothold in one CQ contest, as the new rules for the CQ 160 contest specifically mention recordings.
Section ten of the rules includes the following:
"Special request for competitive entries: Wherever possible, the entrant is asked to record and save an audio file of the contest for review by the committee when requested."
The new CQ 160 rules clearly indicate that it is not mandatory.
"This is only a request and is not required for awards."
The idea has previously been met with a mixed reception. Some say audio recording may in fact be the ultimate assurance when it comes to adjudicating log checks.
Others though argue it places an undue burden on contesters and is overly intrusive.
Just one of many contest ethics issues that may surface again in 2009.
