[CQ-Contest] Improving the skimmer.dxwatch.com website

[Pete Smith]

As some of you probably know, I'm working with Felipe, PY1NB on his 
web-site that collects CW Skimmer spots from Skimmers across North America 
and Europe, and presents them in real-time graphical form, and in lists and 
and through structured searches.

Now that signal strength (or at least signal to noise ratio) is part of 
each Skimmer spot, there is potential for some interesting new uses, like 
using http://skimmer.dxwatch.com to compare your signal with others at any 
given Skimmer, on selected bands, or tracking the variations in your own 
signal across a band opening.

Felipe would like to know what contesters, in particular, would like to do 
with the data that his site is collecting, so that he can design 
appropriate queries.  For example, he could make it possible for you to ask 
for spots at OY3JE on 40 meters November 26-28, 2008 for K3LR, W3LPL and 
KC1XX, and *you*, so you could compare your signals with theirs under 
different band conditions.

In the meantime,  The Spot Search function of the site has been 
expanded.  Under DX Spots on the main menu you can now ask to see up to 150 
spots of any station from a particular Skimmer, or spots of a particular DX 
station by any station in the Skimmer network.  That should permit some 
useful off-line data manipulation, but we realize it's not nearly so nifty 
as having customizable queries that you can use quickly on-line.

If you have ideas about new queries for the web site, please drop him a 
note off the reflector, preferably with a copy to me.

73, Pete N4ZR
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