KT1D decided to come over and give WPX CW a try this weekend. We just got back from Dayton and thoughts of Skimmer were floating through his mind. So, Tim brought along his SDR and hooked it up just before the contest started. We had to fix the 80m 4-square and get a logging program running first, so Skimmer was a last-minute project. Logging software was N1MM. Skimmer was running on a separate pc, bandwidth is 48kHz. K1TTT's packet aggregator software was combining Skimmer spots with spots from other telnet sources.
We used the SDR/Skimmer in "Skimmer-on-the-same-band-as-a-human-op" mode. Our multi-single station includes what I call the "dual-headed rate station". This station has two radios and goes through an Acom 2S1 Switch to share an amplifier and antenna on the same band. When both radios are in RX mode, both hear the band on the same antenna. When either radio goes into TX mode the antenna connection to the other radio is removed to keep that radio safe. We substituted Skimmer for one of the radios. So, the same antenna was shared between Skimmer and the rig with the human op. This was great because it gave Skimmer a really good antenna. But, when the human op was transmitting, Skimmer heard nothing. So, some data was missed. Skimmer proved to be very good at picking up callsigns immediately after she got her antenna back.
Here are some observations:
- So many spots - overall this is bad - too many to be useful and lots of them are bad
- So many busted calls - again, this is bad - too much thought is required to determine the value of any particular call in the list
- Lots of multipliers - this is definitely good - after brain-filtering the list, there are a lot of good mults available. This is particularly good in WPX.
- Distraction - like packet, looking at Skimmer is distracting and that is a bad thing - presently, it takes too much brain power to figure out what is good and what is bad in the list. It might be more efficient to just find the stations manually and listen to it all your self.
- Waterfall plot - This is good - with CW "copyable" by eye, you get a different and very useful perspective. It does feel a bit like RTTY.
Tim seemed overwhelmed by the amount of data offered in the bandmap and spot listings. These tools become so packed with data that he would clear everything out occasionally, and repopulating both with a clean, new set of data.
There is definitely an advantage in seeing the data provided by Skimmer in this contest. Because there are so many easily copyable multipliers available, it is possible to go up and down the band, working these new multipliers much faster than would be possible without the data provided by Skimmer.
No question that using Skimmer as a second op on the same band can have a beneficial impact. The other mode - "Skimmer-listening-to-the-other-bands" would be an interesting mode to experiment with. I envision that this might enhance our ability to make better band changes and pick up more multipliers in our multi-single operations. Ten-minute rule and six band change rules would still apply, of course.
Random question. . . . if you leave your operating position for a few hours to sleep, and packet or Skimmer are left running, is there an off-time issue related to the spots in the bandmap when you get back to the radio? I suspect so. Clear your bandmap when you sit down, and start from scratch.