Big change on DXCC rules

On a different subject...

Is the concept of the paragraph break gone? I get two sentences into a post like this and quit because it's all run together.

73

Steve, K4YZ

 

I, on the otherhand, won't log a QSO with anyone who runs continuous "CQ" loops and then berates answering stations when they don't give a signal report the CQing station thinks is equitable. Kinda like this guy on 10M I know who managed to get kicked out of 10-10 for poor operating practices...Maybe you've heard him...?!?!?

Steve, K4YZ

 

I opposed Remote Bases since 2009 within the 1010. They made their Daily contact legit for Remote Bases in 2010. Of course, it is still not legit to make a 1010 contact in their QSO party from a Remote Base but it was never enforceable. My opposition to Remote Bases was a lot of the reason for my Revoke from that club.

Anyway, It was presented to me very straight forward. And it was my choice. Either operate the way everyone else want you to operate or be Revoked from 1010. It was an easy choice for me to make. I made it within the hour on the same day by responding to the email from the president. I decided to continue to do things my way and I really Revoked 1010 from my operations. Of course , every now and then, I still help my XYL make new 10-10 contacts. I enjoy it and so does she, making new 10-10 contacts.

That is the truth.

And this Remote Base operation has been shoved the general Amateur radio populations faces just like it was done by the directors of 1010 to the regular members of 1010 back in 2010.

73 KC4TVZ Todd

 

I think some people are getting all spun hip over a minor thing, mostly because rather than reacting to what this new policy actually says, they are reacting to what their imagination thinks it says.

 

Exactly!

Thank you!

............Bob

 

Not true...

Remote station users use their "own" call signs.

 

That is incorrect....There are many remotes in USA where you use your own call

 

Dx working split is one of the best opportunities for dishonest behavior to take place.

For example, a "station located 20 miles from me" has a remote connection/tower located a thousand miles from the "rare QRP IOTA DX" and breaks the pileup with a 5/9+ according to the dx on TX frequency while I can't even hear him with some beverage antennas . Yet neither station had mentioned any remote in the call sign. Did one of the stations not mention it? Was it not recorded? Was it omitted intentionally because not everyone is using three receivers for example ?
Indeed, the DXCC awards that had taken perhaps years and endless hours to earn by the HAMS a decade(s) ago could be " bought a lot sooner ". ouch

Here come the frequency cops.....

 

Is offering a remote station for rent not a pecuniary interest?

It's AMATEUR radio--contacts made with a station built

with my own hands bring personal satisfaction.

No bought wallpaper can come close to that.

 

It's actually confusing to most people. Some do, and some don't. Look up the remote station services and most all will state you use your own call sign. The FCC rules are vague, as they only refer to the control operator.

http://www.w3beinformed.org/id6.html

 

No. Not any more than HRO selling someone a radio and antenna.


The pecuniary interest prohibition is for communications. If someone were to pay you to, for example, make a contact with a particular DXpedition, that would be prohibited. But if you were to rent your station to that person, and they they make the same contact, that's not a rules violation.

 

Someone rents your station and makes a contact--is that not communications?

 

Well...no matter what, this wont change my enjoyment of DXing. I prefer paper logs, old keys and listening. But thats what excites me and i never run out of like minded hams to qso with, no worries. How someone else enjoys the hobby, whether i would do it myself or not, wont affect how i enjoy it. Read the letters to the editor in QST going back 100 years...it is full of hams who believe the hobby is dying because of rule changes, allowances, newbies, etc, we survived. The hobby has a LOT of members. We will be fine.

 

For those who oppose remote operation counting for DXCC, I hope you also oppose these things as well:


1) Mobile operation is still fine. Living in a no-antenna southern California condo during next week's (perhaps last-in-a-lifetime) Navassa operation? You missed Bouvet, so that’s not going to happen again. Drive to Florida, and it counts.


2) Same example as #1, no-antenna California condo, and Navassa’s afoot. Your good friend in northern California has a station to die for. No problem. Drive four hours north for a visit, and operate there with your call. It counts. (If it doesn’t, we’re going to have to rework quite a few Honor Roll counts. But there’s no Part 97 problem.)


3) Same example again — no-antenna Cal condo, Navassa in six months. Lucky for you, your job transfer to South Carolina — just 2,458 miles away — happens in four months. This certainly counts...because you moved within the same DXCC entity. Because of the increasingly transient nature of corporate American life, the ARRL changed this rule in 1977, making all contacts that occurred within a single country-entity count. (What a great country we have that affords that kind of propagation advantage. Pity the Luxemburgers.)


4) Same scenario as #3. Just keeping it simple, hi! In this case, not only will Navassa count, but so will every one of those countries previously confirmed 2,453 miles away. And even though remoting-naysayers would discriminate against the remote user who wants to lawfully operate a station just 500 miles away, I've never seen any of them demand that somebody's DXCC count restart from zero just because their job responsibilities were transferred across the country.


5) But wait. What about radio ownership? Well up to now, the DXCC rules said nothing about that. So long as you operated within the same entity, you could live in San Diego but spend your summers vacationing in another ham’s cabin you rent in the Catskills in beautiful upstate New York, and that would count. Navassa, here we come! How come the anti-remoting crowd says nothing about that?


6) Hold up. There’s a problem. This new technology is REMOTING for goodness sakes. There’s something wrong with new technology and change. It’s unfair. Well, that’s what the AM operators said about the SSB folks not too long ago — technological advantage, garbage squawking, ciphers that need decoding. My Dad's old friend W4IO, Cliff Tritchler from Atlanta (sk), used to tell me how the transition from spark to CW caused a lot of heartburn as well. Hams complained that new technology took the challenge out of DXing and made it too easy.


7) But wait. It’s REMOTING, and the distant transceiver is controlled OVER THE INTERNET! The INTERNET! Ok. So what if I use a standard Ma Bell landline to control my station in Florida while I’m on hiatus at a three-month business training in California? I get on the landline (those still exist, ahem), dial my phone in Miami and control my station that way. Would it count? It did for Senator Barry Goldwater, K7UGA (sk), back in the 1960s whose telephone control technique was celebrated by everyone. When he operated with a smaller station in Fairfax, Virginia after the same-entity DXCC rule was enacted in 1977, those contacts counted for him as well.


Life is changing. Our ham population is aging. More DXers will soon be living in more modest, controlled housing that will restrict their favorite activities. Is now the time to stand in the way of novel technologies? Become more restrictive? Become restrictive in ways that unfairly penalize certain technologies but don’t similarly penalize others who also find ways to bridge geography and have their QSLs count? Why would some of our fellow hams oppose new technologies that will add perhaps another decade or two to our beloved hobby?


I love and support even those who may disagree with me regarding remote operation. With that said, I hope my friends on the anti- side have considered all of these existing scenarios as they formulated their positions.


Randy K7RAN

 

Maybe it's just me, I don't get why a ham would get a kick out of "remoting."

Likewise, I'm baffled as to why any guy would pay good money for phone "sex."