[Skimmertalk] Brief experiment with Skimmer and 40 Meter SoftRock at Field Day

[Bill Tippett]

W4ZV:
 >          Drumroll...and the results are:
 >
 > 1.  37 calls.
 > 2.  47 calls.
 > 3.  86 calls (7 obvious busts...possibly more).
 >
 >          I could have improved #1 and #2 above by
 > leap-frogging two VFOs (which is what I normally do)
 > but I just wanted to see what could be done with one.
 > If anyone thinks Skimmer would not totally redefine
 > SOU they're kidding themselves.

W4TV:
 >I think you're not looking at the show picture ... you
say you could have improved #1 and #2 by leap-frogging
the VFOs and you note a "bust" rate of at least 10% in
#3. By the time you reduce the number of calls in #3
for the busts and further reduce the total for dupes and
other "unworkable" stations - then increase #1 and #2
based on leap-frogging the VFOs, etc. the net effect of
each method becomes very nearly the same.

         I think not.  Skimmer was arbitrarily limited
to 24 kHz in this test.  Assuming the same density of
contacts, and assuming 7000-7060 was populated during
Field Day, Skimmer would probably have had well over
200 calls while #1 or #2 might have increased slightly.
Popular contests like CQ WW or the CQ 160 often cover
 >100 kHz, which would imply ~300 calls.  And I'm
being very conservative according to VE3NEA:

"simultaneous decoding of ALL cw signals in the receiver passband - 
up to 700 signals can be decoded in parallel on a 3-GHz P4 if a 
wideband receiver is used;

http://dxatlas.com/CwSkimmer/

         I also assumed a human operator using Skimmer
would not be foolish enough to work and log obviously
busted calls (but this might not be true for Skimmer
II, which will do an entire contest unattended).

KD4D:
 > I note that all the competitive activities I can think of
 > right now prohibit certain technological advances:  Major
 > League baseball prohibits aluminum bats, NASCAR prohibits
 > automatic traction control, Golf strictly regulates balls and
 > clubs, Bridge prohibits card-counting computers, Chess
 > prohibits computers, Scrabble prohibits almost all paper, etc..

W4TV:
 > Unfortunately, other competitive activities are not based on
technology.

         So auto racing is not based on technology?  ;-)  End of
this crazy discussion for me.

                                         73,  Bill  W4ZV