[CQ-Contest] Summarizing the Skimmer Accuracy Thread

[Tim Shoppa]

> Well, when a person makes a stupid spot error, someone else usually tells
> them so and they stop. They don't continually make the same mistake
> throughout the contest like the skimmer/RBN does.

Oh, I disagree entirely. When either a person or the skimmer spots a
busted call, it is amplified by other humans who click on it, work it,
and re-spot it with the same busted call.

I don't think skimmer or humans are perfect, but I use the skimmer
stuff and find it hugely more useful than human generated spots.

I also expect the human to expend at least a little effort to listen
for the station's ID. I know, there are those that don't, but they
will learn if they ever go back and check their LCR.

I also want to add, that 4 or 5 years ago, there were lots of contest
stations that were ID'ing poorly or not at all. Many had defective amp
keying and were consistently dropping leading dits or turning leading
dahs into dits. Some (and I am not making this up, I heard it from
other contest ops) told callers "you are a dupe and I am not going to
give you my call, look it up on the cluster." I am not going to claim
that the situation is perfect today, but it seems a lot better to me,
and there are a number of exemplary stations that ID efficiently after
each and every Q. And having listened to these stations that ID after
every call... they were really doing a dang impressive job managing
pile-ups.

Also, I only heard a handful of stations with defective amp keying or
enormous 100 Hz ripple on their amp. Many many fewer than previous
years.

Tim N3QE