contest_cheating

I should start by informing the reader that this page is informing you of how you detect that someone is cheating.

I do not condone, assist, approve or tolerate any form of cheating in any activity

Should you have a valid concern when competing in a contest, please contact the contest committee - and raise those concerns. Please only do so, when you believe you have enough evidence regarding the infringement.

It is however very very difficult to be reasonably sure someone is cheating, when you are an individual station.

Individual detection

It is generally very difficult to tell on your own if a specific station is breaking the rules, either intentionally, or deliberatly. The reason for this, is that you have limited data, limited points of view.

Received Power levels at your QTH vary due to directions of antennas, general propogation etc.

Contest Committee detection

This is now much easier. With access to many more logs, it is as simple as the following example....

Power Cheats

Instead of Ham Radio data - we will pretend we are the Goverment Tax Inspector department... We have all the Tax Records, Income and Deductables for everyone in the country.

You will calculate something like

  • Filter all people earning between X and Y amount
    • In this group calculate the average deduction (Tax Credit/Exemption)
    • Now show me everyone who is claiming 10 times the average deduction
    • audit those people

It is that simple....

Instead of $$$ use claimed Power, >100W, 5-100W, <5W. Instead of deduction use maximum distance or average distance.

Advanced detection

In addition to the simple example provided above, there are other data sources that can prove to be useful. What are they you ask ?? Social Media is the largest but the most complex source.

Suppose you have now collected all your data - how to do filter/process this ??

For this I use

Additionally, I have developed a range of internal plug-ins using The Development SDK. Due to the licensing agreement on this product, it is not possible to show examples. But I can thoroughly recommend the product, in the hands of a competent Analysis makes finding 'bad people'/'anomalies' very very easy indeed.

Please free to contact with with any Ham radio use-case/data examples, and I will be happy (time permitting) to have a look for you.