[CQ-Contest] DX Summit Spots and more

[Lee Sawkins]

Hi Ed. 

Actually, what I said was 100 spots per second, not minute. 

The RBN's success has not been without growing pains. It has severely stressed both the hardware and software to the breaking point several times. During the ARRL CW contest my node software and the RBN handled the flood of spots without any problem. Some users complain that their spots were an hour behind. This was due to a problem with either their computer system or the node they were using, not the RBN. 

During the last CQ WW CW contest I had a problem with the router built into the modem supplied by my ISP. When I bypassed their router and used my own, the problems went away. Unfortunately the contest was over before I could fix the problem. 

I agree there are 2 parallel universes during assisted CW or RTTY contesting. There are those who use RBN spots and those who don't. Serious contesters do not use Dx Summit. The RBN is functioning just fine thanks to the hard work of all involved. 

Lee VE7CC 

From: "ve7cc" <ve7cc at shaw.ca> 
To: "ve7cc" <ve7cc at shaw.ca> 
Sent: Wednesday, March 1, 2017 6:48:30 PM 
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] DX Summit Spots and more 

Re: [CQ-Contest] DX Summit Spots and more 
Lee, Thank you for a great overview of this needed detail.  Clearly, 100
spots a minute can't flood into DX Summit since it's a visual screen
interface.  Yet, from my observations, it is still widely used as THE
assisted window by many people.  How many?  Enough to give noticeable packet
pileups when you are spotted on it in a CW contest.

 

It would seem that the obvious solution to the RBN spot flood is to
designate just a handful of skimmers around the globe as robot interfaces -
ala W3LPL - and have the flitering set up to only submit the RBN spot once
every 15 or 30 mins.  Populates a global bandmap on CW for everyone running
assisted.  And if that is the way that community wants it.  At least it's a
fairer and more consistent situation.

 

Currently, whether the RBN community wants to admit it or not, there are 2
parallel universes going on in assisted CW contesting.  As a running CQer
that is not manually spotted as much as others - I know the difference -
when I get manually spotted on DX Summit.

 

73

 

Ed  N1UR

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