Culture Change on DX Cluster?

John & List,

I was thinking to write about the same topic after the contest but then i thought why i have to open a subject which many will not understand it the way i meant it. I will write only about the contest topic issue and nothing else, I do participate in all major contests and i know exactly what does it mean when i'm spotted in the DX cluster it clearly means more qso's, Just to give a bit of history, the guys at the our local club started to help me by spotting me when every they HEAR me on any frequency during any major contest just to show their support, after few years there were a list made for those who have suspicious spots and i was listed among them, because i'm spotted from the same ip address for more than once or twice (sure it is a club!!) after this and because i want to be very clean i asked every one in the local club few 4 or 5 years back DO NOT SPOT ME let the others do it, I ended up with much lower qso number than or stations in my area, OK tell me now if i'm a DX from a semi rare country, and i don't belong to a country with high ham population and my own people are not allowed to spot me i will always end up with much lower qso numbers which mean less score!!

I'm sure that if i was a member of one country with high ham population they will keep spotting me all the time. and now i can say i'm sure that most of these spot are not real!! YES SIR.... tell me now if i'm the only one from 9K in all band (except 20m this year) and based on the comments i get on the air i do have a good signal why i'm not getting spots like the others? which they are operating from a country with many hams and many of them joined the contest as full time? and specially they are spotted after each band change.....

Think?

de 9K2HN
Hamad

On Nov 1, 2007 12:46 PM, John Warren <nt5c@texas.net> wrote:
I think I detect the start of a culture change on the DX cluster. You
may not care about it, or - more likely - you'll deplore it, but I
think it's happening anyway, and probably can't be reversed.

It's self-spotting. In most contests it's illegal, but not at other
times, and for many less experienced, and often less powerful DX
stations, especially outside North America, putting one's own
callsign on the cluster is becoming a definite aid to CQing on the
bands.

Under certain circumstances, I don't look at it quite as negatively
as some purists. It's useful for "priming the pump" for unusual
openings, when you alert people to turn their beams to unconventional
directions. For example, 10M long path when (if?) the sunspots come
back, or 10M side-scatter in the summer.

What say you?

John, NT5C.