New Cheating Accusations Surface in Radio Sporting

The summer of 2009 has been a difficult one for the amateur radio radio-sporting (i.e. contesting) community. After years of rumor and innuendo, the CQWW contest committee has publicly lowered the boom, disqualifying a number of top stations and operators. First the CQWW SSB contest saw several top multi-two stations disqualified for apparently being unable to count to ten. Then just a month later, with the results of the CQWW CW contest announced, comes word that the top claimed single op score was disqualified along with several others. While CQ Magazine has remained extremely terse in their announcements of the disqualifications, the website radio-sport.net has provided excellent coverage and commentary.

On the heels of the CQWW controversies comes accusations of contest cheating by another world class top operator, i.e a Big Gun.

The Poisson d'Avril contest was started in 1992 and is held every year on April 1. Every year since its inception the contest has been won by K1DG. While K1DG is an acknowledged world class operator, having won the World Radiosport Team Championship, albeit with family help, the string of 18 consecutive top finishes in any contest is simply beyond credibility. In no other contest has a single operator been able to finish in first place more than a handful of times. Yet, K1DG has won every running of the Poisson d'Avril contest since its inception.

A careful examination of the rules for the Poisson d'Avril contest, which is difficult given that they are published in such obscure languages as Esperanto, l33t, redneck, and pig latin, shows that the contest is not only sponsored by K1DG, but that he also is responsible for all log checking. How such blatant bias has been allowed to continue for so long is certainly a question that senate investigators should ask when this scandal finally receives the attention it deserves.

In what may have been the height of arrogance, back in 2006, K1DG preemptively declared himself the winner of the contest from 2006-2009.

But there is a glimmer of hope that respectability may be restored to this contest. The rules for 2010, which were announced back in 2006, provides new categories and much needed reform. However, like most government reform, a careful reading of the rules exposes loopholes large enough to drive a truck carrying a Big Bertha through.

Will the 2010 Poisson d'Avril contest finally have a winner other than K1DG? We will have to wait and see if legitimate competition will finally be allowed to occur. But we have all suspicions that if K1DG's call doesn't top the winner list, it might well be K1AR, in which case charges of nepotism will likely follow.