Contesting Protests

Foundations of Amateur Radio

For the most part of my Amateur Radio life I've been an active contester. I have spoken about why I love contesting and why I think it's an important aspect of this amazing hobby. Today I want to talk about how contests are run, specifically how complaints are handled and how we could improve.

I must at this time acknowledge that organisers are volunteers, just like many other Amateurs, giving of their free time, in this case, to manage and score a contest. Like much volunteering it's an invisible, sometimes thank-less and unenviable task, often akin to herding cats.

To set the scene, a contest is an organised activity run by one or more people or groups that has a published set of rules, a set of aims and objectives as well as the mechanics of things like on-air conduct, point scoring, etc.

A contester who decides to participate in a contest is expected to read the rules, abide by them and conduct themselves in an appropriate manner, that is, keep accurate logs, follow the log submission rules, etc.

What happens after the logs have been submitted to the organiser is rarely spoken about. There is an assumption that the results are published, that complaints are handled fairly and in a timely fashion and that the outcomes are fair for all participants.

In my experience, it's understood that if the rules don't specifically exclude a particular event, like say, using a Satellite contact during a VHF contest, those are fair game. Of course the response to such a thing is to update the rules to exclude that interpretation for the next contest.

So, there are rules for the contesters, but are there rules for the organisers? What happens if they don't do their part? What process exists then? What if the results take over a year to be published, or you witnessed cheating, or you submit a log that has a score that differs from the results? If you bring that to the attention of the organisers, what is a reasonable response and how would you expect the issue to be resolved?

In the past, any suggestion that there could be a place for a standard set of rules for organisers has been, in my experience, ignored or ridiculed with the notion that "We're all Amateurs here, stop taking things so seriously." In my opinion, that's not a reasonable response and it makes for uncomfortable interactions between contesters and organisers who are attempting to resolve a dispute in a civil way.

In sailing, where the participants are amateurs, as in non-professional sailors, contesting is alive and well. Most weekends see a sailing race on a local water and protests are common. A standardised set of rules exist to handle disputes in a formal manner and raising a protest flag is the beginning of a set of steps that ends up with a ruling.

In the case of contests in the Amateur Radio field, no such thing happens.

As an example, I have personally raised a protest with a contesting organiser and have spent the past months attempting to get the results updated to reflect my actual score. I'm patient and persistent, I document every step, but ultimately I'm at the mercy of the organiser. Their decision to handle my protest is entirely arbitrary. In my opinion, this is not how contesting should work. It should be a fair contest between stations to apply the rules and come to a score.

I've purposefully not named the contest or the organisers, since this is not specific to my protest. This is an issue that affects contests in Amateur Radio everywhere.

What about looking at the sailing community and learning about their protest procedures? Are there contests that you participate in that have a formal complaints process and how well does it actually work? Have you ever had a contest protest that needed adjudicating and how did it work out?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB