[CQ-Contest] question about Skimmer

[Pete Smith]

At 09:07 AM 4/25/2008, Dick Green WC1M wrote:
>I'm not entering the debate (yet). I just have a minor question: Is Skimmer
>smart enough to distinguish between an operator who is CQing and the
>stations being worked? In other words, does it display all calls appearing
>on a frequency, or can it be set to display only run stations? I would
>imagine this isn't terribly difficult to do in software, but wonder if it's
>been incorporated into the current version.


Skimmer does it now, and will be doing it better shortly, I'm sure.  This 
*is* pretty challenging on a PC, though, as Alex has explained to 
me.  Since it isn't a massively parallel system (hello Fort Meade, anyone 
listening hi), if you have up to 700 decoders operating, the software has 
to devote the computer's attention to each one for a very short period, 
during which all the deciding must be done

CQing stations appear in bold on the callsign list.  There is also a 
setting on the Telnet tab to make only CQing stations, as identified by 
Skimmer, available to your logging program via Telnet.  In my couple of 
months' experience, the current Skimmer rarely  makes false positive errors 
(thinks someone's CQing when he's not) but sometimes misses stations 
running with infrequent IDs.

73, Pete N4ZR