In a stunning move, the Potomac Valley Radio Club has voluntarily forfeited the Sweepstakes Competition and Gavel.

The reason was the large number of scores outside of the "circle" used to calculate where a club's geographic boundaries reside. Removing the scores from outside the circle resulted in PVRC losing the competition by a wide margin.

This is a classy move.

I'm not sure that there are log checkers out there looking at the geographic circle of a club and comparing it to the address of the callsign on the log, so I'm not convinced that anyone would have found out about it.

But they revoked it anyway with a clear explanation as to why they were returning the championship.

This should not diminish the efforts of the individual operators working the contest -- indeed, PVRC had the largest turnout for the Sweepstakes competition in their history. Participation is the name of the game in Sweepstakes, so this is a good indicator of the strength of the club.

The amount of self-policing in ham radio contesting is very high; especially compared to other sports. We all make efforts, from huge to small, to participate in our hobby. There are hundreds of different objectives for different operators in the same contest -- from winning to trying out a new antenna to building code speed -- but we all pretty much stay inside the rules.

This move by the PVRC is an affirmation that we participate in contests by following the rules -- and taking ourselves out of a compromised situation when we don't.

Bravo.

Scot, K9JY