You took me too literally Pete, and missed my point.
You are operating under the assumption that RBN and spotting is the best way
to move contesting forward. What I was driving at is that not everyone may
agree with you, and for their own reasons (good bad or indifferent) may not
wish to be, ah, aided by these technological marvels, directly or
indirectly.
There is also the Law of Unintended Consequences to consider. There are
people who are harvesting the data from these and other types of spotting
networks or spotting systems for their own purposes.
Think I'm being paranoid when I say that? Well, I just started getting my
station on PSK31 over the weekend. I made one short test CQ (and then ran
into a laptop issue to resolve, but I digress). 12 hours later, I get an
spam email informing me that my CQ was detected & that I have now been
entered into some grand PSK database scheme. Did you know that there is a
group of amateurs who are spotting & storing PSK stations -- and harvesting
the calls, and finding their email addresses? I didn't...
But if someone is going to take the trouble to do that with PSK, imagine
what they might do with the output from a cluster or an RBN type of spotting
system. And what will they do with it?
I work in IT. Part of my job is to manage my firm's data security.
ANYTHING that potentially can provide clues to one's identity, that can
potentially be used for a security breach or an attempt at identity theft
raises my eyebrows. So I have to wonder... what will come of all this data
once the contest is over?
73
-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Pete Smith
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 9:40 AM
To: reflector cq-contest
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Reverse Beacon Network Question
Because it is the very best way to get callers quickly after you start
CQing on a given frequency. If you choose not to take the opportunity
presented, as a matter of some sort of principle, that's your
privilege. I suspect that is a minority view.
73, Pete N4ZR
The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at www.conteststations.com
The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at
reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000
On 2/15/2011 8:59 AM, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
> Why would you?
>
>
> Feb 15, 2011 07:51:36 AM, n4zr@contesting.com wrote:
>
> Indeed. But why wouldn't you?
>
> 73, Pete N4ZR
>
> The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at
www.conteststations.com
> The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at
reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
> spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000
>
>
>
> On 2/14/2011 1:37 PM, David Robbins wrote:
>> That is of course assuming you want the skimmers to spot you.
>>
>>
>> Feb 14, 2011 01:28:31 PM, n4zr@contesting.com wrote:
>>
>> Thanks to an off-reflector message from KU5B (which I have somehow
>> misplaced), I can confirm what I thought had happened. He did not use
>> the key words "TEST" or "CQ" in his CQ message, so CW Skimmer did not
>> recognize him to be calling CQ.
>>
>> There are some other key words that would have worked the same way, but
>> Alex has asked me not to talk about CW Skimmer details. However, I
>> don't believe "NA" is on the list, and it should be.
>>
>> As it is currently configured, the RBN Aggregator software, which each
>> RBN station runs to send information to the server, does not forward
>> non-CQ spots to the "mother ship". This is because to do so would badly
>> overload the server. That precludes our doing any post-processing, to
>> identify runners that Skimmer has missed.
>>
>> In coming months, we may be able to change this, but for ARRL DX, I
>> suggest putting TEST in your CQ messages periodically to make sure
>> you're recognized.
>>
>> 73, Pete N4ZR
>>
>> The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at
www.conteststations.com
>> The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at
reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
>> spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/13/2011 7:55 PM, Dave/Sally Cockrum wrote:
>>> With the news that the Russian DX Contest will want additional
>>> information from QRP and LP entrants so that a comparison between
>>> signals can be made using the Reverse Beacon Network, I decided to
>>> compare the results for the recent Sprint CW contest. I compared the
>>> top five LP stations in the 3830 results (in order: KU5B, K7BG, N9CK,
>>> N5DO, and N7CW) for February 6 using the Signal Comparison Tool . I
>>> selected the Reverse Beacon from K3LR because it had the most spots on
>>> that day -- 11,011. Nothing dramatic jumped out at me from looking at
>>> the graphs comparing the signals, except for one thing: The number of
>>> times each station was spotted by the Reverse Beacon. Those were
>>> surprising: KU5B was spotted 0 times, K7BG 58 times, N9CK 0 times, N5DO
>>> 72 times, and N7CW 63 times.
>>>
>>> The leading station and number 3 were never spotted at all!
>>>
>>> I thought maybe it was a propagation issue, so I picked a leading
>>> Reverse Beacon from the west coast, WA7LNW, with 6,038 total spots on
>>> that day. The same pattern occurred: KU5B 0 spots, K7BG 46 spots, N9CK
>>> 0 spots, N5DO 37 spots, and N7CW 12 spots.
>>>
>>>
>>> Is this some artifact of the Sprint contest? Is there something in the
>>> way KU5B and N9CK called CQ that led to them not being spotted? And is
>>> there a secret to being spotted more often? How will results like this
>>> effect the ability of the RBN to be an investigative tool?
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> CQ-Contest mailing list
>>> CQ-Contest@contesting.com
>>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> CQ-Contest@contesting.com
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>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
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