The integrity of the WWFF program is based on trust. Trust that activators perform their operations in accordance with the Rules, without too much oversight.
Sometimes, however, that trust is misplaced… and where our attention is drawn to questionable behaviour, Team WWFF will take action, including retrospective invalidation of activities.
For some time, we have been monitoring the logs of a number of activators, where activities were being submitted with the same collection of chasers – but excluding any of the recognised Top Hunters, and with no evidence of the activation having taken place (no photos, no cluster spots etc).
The logs contained entries for Hunters that met the following criteria:
- Hunter has multiple hunter QSOs, but with only a small number of Activators
- Over 95% of hunter QSOs are with an Activator who is under investigation
- Hunter has no QRZ page, or no content on a blank QRZ page
- Hunter is not registered on WWFF.CO
I have, this morning flagged as suspicious 63 Hunter Callsigns, representing over 13,000 QSOs, claimed by two Activators (including when operating using known Club callsigns)… a further number of Hunter Callsigns claimed by those Activators are being reviewed; a number of other Activators are also under investigation.
I do not believe any genuine Hunters will be impacted by this – but anyone who unexpectedly finds a red triangle icon on the QSOs tab, should contact me.
Note: a small number (less than 100 in total) of QSOs attributed to other Activators have also been flagged… the expectation is that these are simply busted callsigns that have been incorrectly logged.
Given that the only person that these Activators are cheating are themselves, I do not understand this behaviour.
Edit to add (2021-12-07 17:18utc)
Updated figures: 17,729 QSOs from 88 “hunters” for the 2 activating operators (using their own calls plus club stations).
