[Skimmertalk] Skimmer Server & CQWW: one year late

Mon Nov 29 07:29:32 PST 2010

May I also suggest that we all need to tighten the frequency calibration of our Skimmer Servers? I found many of the spots received were off more than 100 Hz. Also, as noted below we should all make sure we don't have a hole in our decoder for the digital portion of the bands.

I used aggressive all weekend.

Thank you to everyone for the consolidated look at the RBN via telnet. I can offer to host a consolidated telnet node for future contests if needed. I have lots of bandwidth and server capacity.

73,

Mack de WB4MAK
http://wb4mak.com
http://www.nfarl.org
http://www.sedxc.org

-----Original Message-----
From: skimmertalk-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:skimmertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of k3mm at verizon.net
Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 10:07
To: wes.cosand at gmail.com
Cc: skimmertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Skimmertalk] Skimmer Server & CQWW: one year late

As Rosanne Rosannadana used to say, "It's always something!"  hi!

After SS and CQWW experiences, us skimmer operators and perhaps Alex need to work on improving the accuracy of the information we provide to the masses.

Is there any good documentation on the filtering modes within SkimServ (for the QS1R)?   Does Aggressive use the Master.dta file in both CWSkimmer and SkimServ?

While master.dta filtering is OK, you will miss a few new callsigns, which isnt acceptable on Sunday afternoon when many are begging for new contacts.  But even more unacceptable is the mass of bad skimmer spots that proliferate your  spot window after you've "worked everybody".

I started out running aggressive the first night, but then switched to Normal and I discovered that greatly increased the busted calls coming from my node.  I was elsewhere operating the contest, so I couldnt switch it back easily.  I noticed that KM3T also seemed to be supplying a lot of busted calls.  

Unfortunately, if we are all logging into the same large pot of skimmers, we are all going to suffer from even one errant node, so I think it's important that all of the skimmer operators agree on a standard contest skimmer operating protocol for the major contests.  Now we just have to figure out what that protocol is!

I would prefer NOT to use a master.dta file, especially for the DX contests, but we need the other filtering to be tighter than the current "Normal" mode.  Of course, this means Alex needs to get involved.
73, Ty K3MM

Nov 28, 2010 09:37:59 PM, wes.cosand at gmail.com wrote:

What a difference a year makes!

First an apology. Of all the nights for Verizon to turn off the fiber optic
line to the house for two hours, Saturday night was the wrong night. Of
course they changed the IP address so users who were using a numerical
address instead of cw.wz7i.com were unable to reconnect. I apologize.

I think I have found a computer system appropriate for running SkimServer.
I used an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 and at times it ran over 2200 decoders
without getting above 80% CPU utilization. I never saw less than 100%
decoding. XP Pro was the OS and the Skimmer Server version was 1.2.0.110.

I was unaware of the CWSegment lines in the SkimSrv.ini file. But Saturday
morning I looked at a bandmap and saw a hole between 7.035 and 7.045 and
realized something was wrong. I modified the default CWSegment lines and
broadened the segments to accommodate contesters outside the strict CW
portions of the bands. Alex suggests having two or three versions of the
CWSegment line and then “commenting out” the undesired lines so one can
rapidly modify the file. My current version of this area of the file is
below but I can’t guarantee it is optimal. I am still learning. I would be
very interested in suggestions from contesters about appropriate band
segments.
;DX CW Segments
CwSegments=1800000-1870000,3500000-3570000,7000000-7070000,10100000-10130000,14000000-14070000,18068000-18095000,21000000-21070000,24890000-24920000,28000000-28070000,50000000-50100000
;Contest CW Segments
;CwSegments=1800000-1870000,3500000-3600000,7000000-7100000,10100000-10130000,14000000-14125000,18068000-18095000,21000000-21120000,24890000-24920000,28000000-28120000,50000000-50100000

Of course, there must not be any “carriage returns” in these lines. If you
bring up your SkimSrv.ini file in Notepad and turn off Word Wrap, the
command should be one long line. The above contest segments line assumes
you will run 192 kHz bandwidth.

With the telnet spot filtering set to “Aggressive”, and having the CWSegment
line set inappropriately for the first 15 hours or so, the system generated
63,000 spots from a HyGain HyTower Junior vertical. This is not as many as
some of the systems.

I want to express my appreciation to those cluster owners who made these
spots available to contesters without them having to connect directly to my
computer. I don’t have a good feel for how much telnet connections cost in
cpu time or network traffic – I wouldn’t think it very much. However I
averaged 10 connections and it seemed to have an impact, at least on the
house network.

Hopefully during this contest I corrected a couple of stupid errors and next
contest I will be better prepared. Things went much better than last year!

I welcome suggestions that would improve the data. I hope folk had fun

Wes, WZ7I
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