Hey Dez,
Great feedback. From the Northeast US, we use the RBN feed and filter it
to show only clusters from the New England states, VE9/2, and out to PA.
These makes a very robust feed to populate the bandmap, without overflowing.
Of course, I am patient waiting for people to see me in their bandmap.
However, my empirical evidence shows that many band maps in Eu are not
being populated by RBN; I know this because as soon as I am spotted
conventionally, I immediately get a run. I think a lot of this is due to
people staying connected to their most favorite cluster. Perhaps that
cluster is not offering RBN feeds. I have my own cluster running ARCluster (
w1ve.com), and users are free to use the RBN feed or not. Is this option
available on most clusters in Europe?
Of course, on CW, the side effect of RBN is that people don't spot nearly
as much anymore. Given that truth, let's hope more systems offer RBN.
The RBN is a firehose if you don't filter it, but filtering is very robust
and pretty darn easy.
Outside of contests, operating from VY1AAA, I can be very loud into many
Skimmers, Eu or otherwise, for hours, yielding few QSOs... as soon as I'm
conventionally spotted, a long-running pile happens.
Maybe it is just more education and buy-in?
73, Gerry W1VE
On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 6:03 AM, Dez Watson <g3ww.dez@gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting thread this, I’m enjoying it. Here are some of my thoughts.
>
> I usually enter assisted in CW contests and use the RBN feed but I rather
> think the RBN has become a victim of its own success.
>
> A little about my setup. I filter the RBN feed firstly through VE7CC
> software which is then fed into the excellent ViewProp where I further
> select a suitable capture area, filter on signal strength and wpm. Now even
> with a heavily filtered feed, my bandmap during CQWW, where I did single
> band 40, was typically populated with around 180 runners at any one time.
>
> So if you’re CQ-ing and hitting European skimmers, you will instantly
> appear on my bandmap, providing those skimmers are within my capture area
> and you’re not already in my log HI HI. The problem is, you are just one of
> 180 other runners who are in the bandmap.
>
> The RBN has been a massive game changer of course, it’s a great equaliser
> which doesn’t just spot the rare DX but ALL runners.
>
> You’ve discovered you’re hitting European skimmers, just be patient. We
> Europeans WILL get to you, as we work our way through our heavily populated
> bandmaps.
>
> On another note, this year in CQWW I set my cousin (G7KMT) up with a
> skimmer, he lives 1 mile from my station. We used a Butternut HF6V to feed
> his SDR and his antenna is almost identical to my own contest vertical.
>
> Abiding by the rules, I allowed his skimmer to feed the RBN. The single
> most useful skimmer to me during CQWW was my cousins, as I could guarantee
> whatever it spotted I could definitely hear. This made S&P very efficient.
>
> If you do run your own skimmer, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE make it public by
> feeding it into the RBN.
>
> There is nothing to stop you from then filtering the incoming RBN feed so
> heavily afterwards so that you only see your own local skimmer spots.
>
> 73
>
> Dez, G3WW / M6W
>
>
> Gerry, W1VE wrote:
>
> Europe opened to NA very early on 40m this weekend; it was runable from
> K2LE by
> 13:30 local both Saturday and Sunday.
>
> When I would call CQ, the RBN would light up like a Christmas tree from EU
> skimmers with very good reports.
>
> However, little would call in until I was manually spotted by a caller, and
> a pile ensued.
>
> BTW, congrats to the RBN team for quickly bringing the system back up after
> it died!
> (They exceeded a PHP config threshold)... Essentially rebooting CQWW!! :-)
>
> 73, Gerry W1VE @ K2LE this weekend
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