[CQ-Contest] CW Open and the RBN

[Pete Smith N4ZR]

I ran into an interesting phenomenon using RBN spots in the CWO. Several 
stations were repeatedly mis-decoded by the RBN, and I think the cause 
probably had to do with spacing.  I have BCC'd those I specifically 
noted, to avoid embarrassment, but here's the story:

Stations that left insufficient space in a CQ between "CWO" or "TEST" 
and the start of their callsign were "rewarded" with spots for ON and OK 
or TN (for example) instead of their real N and K prefixes.  Stations 
that inserted slightly additional spaces between letters in their suffix 
(this seems to have been particularly prevalent with last letters like 
"E" and "I") found their callsigns truncated (with the last letter left 
off)'.

If you think this might have been happening to you, you can test it by 
searching on the beta RBN web site for possibly truncated or expanded 
versions of your call.  You can even use a wildcard (*) at 
beta.reversebeacon.net/main.php to search for all the possible additions 
- some won't work because they result in imaginary prefixes.  
Personally, I was delighted to learn that despite a lot of running, my 
call was not miscopied in this way by the RBN.  My CQs were all 
machine-sent, which may explain it.

-- 
73, Pete N4ZR
Check out the new Reverse Beacon Network
web server at <http://beta.reversebeacon.net>.
For spots, please use your favorite
"retail" DX cluster.