Admission of a little over one-per-minute wrong-freq-same-band RBN spots
at
http://lists.contesting.com/pipermail/skimmertalk/2013-April/001149.html
prompted me to finish the queries I started working on back in 2011 to
find all the bogus-frequency spots on RBN - a project I started when
like HB9CVQ, somebody else noticed RBN spotting him somewhere he wasn't
transmitting & unlike HB9CVQ, was worried he was transmitting a fecal
signal as he didn't know if his transmitter was clean or not.
Fecal signals we have been told are one of the reasons for
bogus-frequency spots on RBN.
DJ7WW subsequently mentioned ON5KQ's skimmer. It, along with most of
the other skimmers, were making bogus-frequency spots in the 2013-03-08
RBN spot data I have been working with most recently:
81 skimmers spotted at least once the same call within one minute as
another skimmer spotted that call - but on a frequency >1 kc away but
still on the same band where the other skimmer spotted it. That was 87%
of all skimmers QRV that day. Total of these wrong-freq-same-band
spots: 5962.
69 skimmers spotted at least once the same call within one minute as
another skimmer spotted that call - but on a different band. That was
74% of all skimmers QRV that day. Total of these wrong-band spots: 885.
There were 175584 RBN spots that day - excluding DXpeditions & special
event calls - stations potentially on >1 band or >1 frequency on the
same band simultaneously. Being a weekday, deliberately fecal signals
from dodgy contesters should have been largely avoided. The total of
bogus-frequency spots were just shy of 3.9% of the total of the data set
as described - nearly twice the high end of the range I had first
suggested I thought it might be.
Who knows, maybe when diluted with the additional activity during a
contest that rate does go down. And/or maybe there is something to the
chatter about skimmers not hearing so well stations during contests that
they seem to hear the rest of the time. Certainly not me, having
previously been involved in developing, debugging & deploying SDRs & the
pay-TV platforms they received long before skimmer appeared!
Anyway, on that day there were on average nearly five bogus-frequency
RBN spots each minute. The data has been there for anyone without
confirmation bias to download & see for themselves.
The receiver performance reference mentioned below, as noted by DJ7WW,
is irrelevant - though the product itself is an excellent example of
another reason we keep being told is behind wrong-band-same-freq RBN
spots - though most of those spots come from skimmers that are not using
receivers of the type we have been told are the culprit.
-ex-VR2BG/p.
Interesting - I "admitted" what? That there are a lot of Softrock-type
receivers on the RBN, some of which have inadequate I/Q image
reduction? Sure. That direct downconversion receivers like the QS1R
occasionally throw what look like I/Q spots, even though there is no
simple explanation. Sure. I saw mine throw one of those just
yesterday. Wish I knew why.
The RBN teamis actively working on a promising technological solution to
get rid of all of thisclass of busted spots.
Wrong-band spots are quite another creature. I'm still waiting for data
on these, but think that either inadequate harmonic suppression and/or
intermod will be shown to be the source. If that's the case, then the
receiver used probably makes little difference.
Bret, before you attack SDR receiver performance indiscriminately, take
a look at Rob Sherwood's review of the KX3.
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