[CQ-Contest] For NCJ - Seeking Skimmer Experience in SS and CQWW CW

[Pete Smith]

I am still looking for reports of specific, real-contest experience with CW 
Skimmer as the basis for a follow-up article for National Contest Journal 
early next year.  Radio-sport.net reports today that a number of people 
will be using Skimmer in CQWW in the Assisted class, and I have talked with 
a number of multi-ops with similar plans.  I'm sure that there were more 
people using Skimmer in Sweepstakes that I haven't yet heard from, as well.

For whatever it's worth, I plan to be on during CQWW, but probably in more 
of an R&D mode than a serious effort.  My Skimmer is fed by an SDR-IQ, 
tapped into the RX antenna loop of my second radio with a K8ZOA buffer 
amplifier.  That means it is behind the bandpass filters on that radio, as 
well as behind an RX protector, so I should be able to go on skimming while 
transmitting on the run radio.  I expect to have Skimmer monitoring one 
band above my run band in the morning on Saturday, to be sure and catch any 
15 and 10 meter openings, and move it around on the second day looking for 
both openings and multipliers.  I'll be feeding the spots via Telnet to 
N1MM Logger, and *not* using any conventional cluster.

Did YOU use Skimmer?  In what contest, and what class?  What hardware and 
software implementation?  What worked well, and what didn't?  Be as 
specific and detailed as you like (or as brief as you want).  Did you use 
the new Skimmer "blind" mode, in which decoding is disabled, making it just 
a very capable bandscope?

If you considered using Skimmer but decided not to, tell me why you made 
that decision.  I will compile a compendium of responses to all these 
questions, as the basis for the article.  If there is interest, I'll find a 
place to post the full compendium, like the old reflector summaries of
yore, before we all had bandwidth to burn.

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY on the REFLECTOR - send your input directly to me 
(n4zr at contesting.com), or post it on Skimmertalk at contesting.com, which is 
evolving into a technical and operational reflector for Skimmer 
contesters.  If you'd rather not have your call associated with your input, 
or if you would rather not have your input included in the compendium, 
please be sure to tell me.

Thanks in advance!

73, Pete N4ZR