[CQ-Contest] DX Summit Spots and more

[Steve London]

On 03/02/2017 03:51 AM, Ed Sawyer wrote:

> My point is that the general belief in the contesting community today is
> that if you are on CW today you are "automatically spotted for everyone" and
> the need for manual spotting for CW is gone.  The belief is that everyone
> that matters is connected to a node and sees the RBN spots.  Unfortunately,
> actual data on the air suggests otherwise.  There is still some meaningful %
> of contesters using web window based tools that are not seeing RBN spots and
> therefore not seeing spots until they are manually done.

They are not contesters. They are folks who make a few contest QSO's. 
Nothing wrong with that.

> For them, RBN has
> actually decreased the effectiveness of their world of assisted in the last
> few years.

They will learn that there are far better tools for getting spots than 
DX Summit, and those tools integrate nicely into their general-purpose 
logging software. They will also learn how useful the RBN is, and learn 
how to properly set filters.

For CW contests, I find it hard to believe that there are very many who 
use web-based spotting tools, such as DX Summit. I look forward to some 
hard data, but be careful how you gather that data. The correct way to 
gather that data is to take the log of a big gun, such as W3LPL or 9A1A, 
and, for every station they worked, find out how that station found the 
big gun:

- Tuning the big knob ?
- Packet cluster, non-RBN spot ?
- Packet cluster, RBN spot ?
- Waterfall/spectrum scope display ?
- Web-based spotting tool ?
- Text message from a friend ?
- Other ?

SSB contests are a very different story. I believe that there are much 
larger numbers of non-contesters working the big guns who do not use 
packet clusters, but may use web-based spotting.

73,
Steve, N2IC