[CQ-Contest] SS Skimmer Spot Quality

[Pete Smith]

I *think* I understand why people perceived Skimmer spot quality to be 
bad, particularly on Sunday.

Suppose you have filtered spots so that you are only getting them from 
your immediate area - in my case, we have 7 Skimmers nearby.  Someone 
calls CQ and is spotted correctly by all 7.  For the next 10 minutes, 
Skimmer at those 7 stations will not forward *that* spot again, but in 
those 10 minutes the guy might solicit callers 10-20 times.  If ONE of 
those 7 Skimmers hears him but busts the call due to QRM or whatever, 
out of 70-140 chances) it will be forwarded to the RBN and distributed 
from there.  Most logging programs will see it as a new station and show 
it in bandmaps.  On Sunday, most of the real stations had already been 
worked, so often only the busts were showing up (for example, in the 
Available window of N1MM).

We are working on measures that we can take at the RBN to improve this 
situation.  These could include checking against a master.dta file, or 
there may be something more sophisticated we can do.  For example, we 
could only pass a spot that was heard the same way by a minimum number 
of Skimmers within a few-second window.  Any ideas anyone has will be 
gratefully received.

So far as we can tell, the RBN held up pretty well despite unprecedented 
spot rates this weekend.  Peak rates of over 1300 spots per minute were 
seen often, and we came within a hair of beating last year's 24-hour 
CQWW volume record - pretty amazing for a W/VE contest.  Aside from my 
accidentally shutting down the AR cluster node for about one minute on 
Sunday (sorry for anyone who got disconnected), I think everything 
stayed up and handled the load well.

Now to fix those Sunday busts!

73, Pete N4ZR

The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at www.conteststations.com
The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000 AND now
at arcluster.reversebeacon.net port 7000



On 11/7/2011 6:18 PM, Barry wrote:
> The skimmers suck.  In SS, I'd estimate 50% busted calls and this is
> perfect, computer sent CW.
> Barry W2UP
>
> On 11/7/2011 9:53 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
>> Which contest?  Examples?
>>
>> In CW who cares.  There are enough skimmers to find nearly anyone
>> operating on any band.
>>
>> Mike W0MU
>>
>> J6M CQ WW DX CW Contest 2011
>> J6/W0MU November 21 - December 1 2011
>> W0MU-1 CC Cluster w0mu.net
>>
>>
>> On 11/6/2011 7:00 AM, Telegraphy.com wrote:
>>> I've been watching DX Summit and see many instances where US stations are spotting other US stations
>>> on a selective basis during Sweepstakes.  This is obviously nothing more than cheerleading and in my
>>> opinion totally unnecessary and frankly unfair.   What's wrong with those who are doing the spotting are
>>> they oblivious or just plain stupid?
>>>
>>>
>>> Tony
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>                            Tony Rogozinski
>>> Amateur Radio W4OI - W4AMR - HK1AR - HK1AR/4
>>>                LICENSED FOR OVER 54 YEARS
>>>             EX-N7BG, K5LMJ, K4KES, WA6BOU,
>>>           W6JPC W7HZF, F7BK, VP5AR, VQ9AR,
>>>              OJ0/N7BG, CN2BG, 5V7BG, TY5AR
>>>              9G5AR, TU/N7BG, ZC4BG, HK3KAV
>>>                    HK0/HK1AR and many others
>>>                       I've been to 103 Countries
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
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