[CQ-Contest] Skimmer and NA CW sprints

[James Cain]

See below. Wow, I have no idea what this is about. I earn my living, such as it is, as a technical editor, translating geekspeak into English for civilians, so I'd like to think I'm not exactly brain dead. But what on earth does this have to do with radio contesting?

(I thought Skimmer had been banished from this reflector, to some geek ghetto). 

K1TN/2

At 09:00 PM 2/12/2009, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
>I just received my LP-PAN.  You do need a professional grade type sound card
>to get the full use of this device.
>
> >From what I understand you can save each session.  I wonder if you can save
>Skimmer outputs?  A few K3's with this and skimmer would produce some
>interesting data if there was an easy way to digest it all.

I use a $50 PCI card (an M-Audio Revolution, the cheapest thing I could 
find with 96-KHz bandwidth).  The noise response is flat within a couple of 
dB.  More to the point, I hope you LP-PAN users will keep asking Alex to 
remove the 24-KHz limitation when using this combination, because it is 
unnecessary.

As for saving, you can do an I/Q recording of the 24-KHz swath, which will 
allow you to "relisten" the session.  You can also log the callsigns that 
Skimmer identifies by connecting to its Telnet server with the Windows 
Telnet client, using its -f command-line switch to create a text log 
file.  I have done this with entire contests, and then imported the 
information into Excel - makes it easy to compare the signal strength of 
stations, see who opens the band from Europe (for example), and lots of 
other interesting things.

73, Pete N4ZR