[CQ-Contest] Skimmer spots compared to human spots

[jpescatore at aol.com]

My experience with accuracy of spots is very different than W5OV's. Using the N1MM software, I have a choice of spot sources,and combinations of sources. When my only choices were the "human driven" clusters, the innacuricies drove me nuts. BY instead of 6Y alone was annoying - plus the amazing number of North Koreans spotted... Then add in the spotting of stations that were actually answering CQs, including people spotting answers to their *own* CQs. During a contest it really doesn't help if a bad spot goes out and then 10 people either send out announces or odd new spots to chastise the mis-spotter.

I spend plenty of time day to day DXing and contests actually mask the horrible innaccuracy level of the global cluster systems - the flood of good contester-create contest spots is like a fresh clean rain thinning out a badly polluted stream!

When the RBN came along, I tried using it in conjunction with the people driven spotting and saw the innacuracies in both - from day one the skimmer spots had a higher level of accuracy on the first day of the contest. On the second day, when so many calls were already worked and filtered out, the accuracy level seemed lower. But he RBN accuracy a year or two ago improved quite a bit - to me to the point where it is clearly higher than the aggregated people-driven spots.

When you look at that list of spot sources in N1MM or other contesting software, it is like looking at your TV dial - you can choose any channel, not choose to ever switch to certain channel or not watch at all. If you find one source is more accurate than the other, turn the dial that way.

John K3TN