Alarm! An Inspector is on his way!
CQ WW DX 2009 Contest rules have been published.
The most discussed rule change is this one:
"A competitor contacted by the CQ WW Contest Commmittee prior to the contest must agree to a scheduled visitation by a representative of the CQ WW CC during the contest. Failure of the entrant to respond to our correspondence or to allow an observer full access to the contest QTH will result in the entrant's call being removed from award eligibility for 5 years."
In short, any entrant should allow the CQ WW Committee observer full access to his station during the contest. If an entrants fails to reply to the Committee emails or does not allow observer's presence this will lead to Disqualification for 5 years. During these 5 years an entrant will not be eligible for any contest awards held by CQ Magazine.
Rumors say other contest committee are close to mutual recognition of disqualification exposed by some contest committees, so, for example, the Disqualification exposed by CQ WW would mean Disqualification for Russian DX Contest if the RDXC Committee join the agreement.
At the same time we have an unexpected discussion on the RD3AF (Valery Komarov) Disqualification who worked as EF8M in this contest. Many people have been involved in the discussion, including RD3AF himself. The fact of disqualification has been admitted by some of the CQ WW Committee in private messages.
Val RD3AF stated in his radio-sport.net interview that he is aware of the diqualification intentions but he does not consider himself as the rule violator because he worked on his own and he did not use a second radio, i.e. it was not SO2R. On the other hand, contest committee members persist there were rule violations and they can prove it.
I had a conversation with one of the well-known contesters about the situation and he advocated Komarov saying he is aware of something that could lead to disqualification but it is not what the contest committee persists on but something he was told by someone on Canary islands.
Unfortunately both sides zealously uphold their arguments and do not want to prove them. Also they persist on staying anonimous hiding their calls but simultaneously wanting their opinion to be spread widely among the contesting society.
EF8M's log is available for examination at http://www.cqww.com/cq-ww-cw-2008.htm so any concerned person can examine it and come to his own conclusions.
Since the disqualification is public, I think the conclusions should be public too, unlike of the talks in the corridors.
73 Al 4L5A
