[CQ-Contest] Can Reverse Beacon Network skimmers get overloaded?

[Joe]

I had the exact same experience here!
In S&P 90% of the time a single call to a CQing station and I'd have him 
and logged, Wham-Bam done,

I was playing on 10 meters only, and the band seemed pretty good.

But finding a hole and trying for a run was totally fruitless, and this 
mode of contesting is typically 50% of my typical mode. But this time I 
bet it ended up less than 10% if it was that high.  I started that way, 
and thought there was something wrong with my station, but then when one 
call would work CQing stations, it was obvious I was getting out well.

Very Strange.

Joe WB9SBD
Sig
The Original Rolling Ball Clock
Idle Tyme
Idle-Tyme.com
http://www.idle-tyme.com
On 5/27/2013 10:21 PM, Hank Greeb wrote:
> I had a terrible time trying to make a "run" when I tried now and then 
> during the recent CQ WPX contest.  I'd call CQ for as long as 10 
> minutes, and only once did I get more than one or two contacts in a 
> row from trying to "run."  I figured that propagation was weird, but 
> couldn't figure out what the deal was.
>
> After the fact I searched for my call in the past 24 hours, and found 
> that I had rarely been heard calling CQ by any of the skimmers on the 
> Reverse Beacon Network, and even more rarely was I more than 10 dB 
> above ambient noise.  I've had considerably better results in other 
> recent contest efforts.  On a typical day, if no contest is in 
> progress, I can call CQ two or three times in a minute, and I'd be 
> heard by numerous skimmers, with my poorer home location.
>
> I figured that the skimmers must have been overloaded, or the fact 
> that thousands of folks were calling CQ was overloading their capacity 
> to dig down for the weaker stations.
>
> In comparing my results, hour over hour compared to last year, I made 
> "about" the same number of Q's per hour - >99.44% of the S&P, so it 
> would appear that, even with lousy ionospheric conditions, I was able 
> to S&P with similar effectiveness. Last year, at home, with just a low 
> wire antenna, I didn't even try "running" so I don't know if I was 
> being heard by the skimmers.
>
> Is it possible that the sheer number of signals on the air make the 
> skimmers less sensitive?  Or is my thinking all wrong?
>
> 72/73 de n8xx Hg
> QRP >99.44% of the time
> Operated WQ8RP during CQ WPX 2013
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>
>