[Skimmertalk] Skimmer use places op in Assisted category forCQWW

[Pete Smith]

At 11:44 AM 8/12/2008, Stan Stockton wrote:
>A private Skimmer "spotting network" gives an unassociated nice guy
>direct access to a receiver and code reader located on another
>continent.
>
>Anyone who has used it will tell you that Skimmer does not limit its
>spots to those calling CQ even if you have that particular mode
>selected.


What Stan describes could be done using any SDR and software to make its 
audio and user interface available on the Internet, perhaps as simple as 
PoerSDR and PCAnywhere or as sophisticated as a user-controlled web-page RX.

A remote Skimmer is NOT a remote receiver.  It ONLY gives Telnet access to 
a stream of spots, with each spot repeated no more often than every ten 
minutes unless the spotted station changes frequency before that.  If the 
owner has enabled it, There is a VERY limited subset of SH/ commands, like 
those used on DX clusters, but all they will do is give you a SH/DX style 
historical list of recent spots or recent spots of a given station.  You 
can QSY the Skimmer to a given frequency, but that does NOT afford you the 
ability to decode what the station is transmitting on that frequency - the 
main purpose of that command is simply to allow for band changing from 
inside a logging program, without having to reopen the Skimmer GUI.

Does the Internet afford new opportunities for cheating?  You bet, but 
Skimmer isn't part of that problem.

73, Pete N4ZR