[Skimmertalk] Bad Skimmer Spots

[Pete Smith]

73, Pete N4ZR

The World Contest Station Database, updated daily at www.conteststations.com
The Reverse Beacon Network at http://reversebeacon.net, blog at reversebeacon.blogspot.com,
spots at telnet.reversebeacon.net, port 7000



On 2/4/2011 12:55 PM, Lee Sawkins wrote:
> Yes, CC Cluster does a local lookup using the latest FCC data.  
> Nothing to do with QRZ.
>
> Although it is a good idea to drop non issued USA calls, the point I 
> was trying to make is that there are many broken calls that look 
> exactly like good ones.  These ones are only detectable as they are 
> not currently valid FCC ones.  You cannot simply look at the output of 
> a skimmer for obvious broken calls and use that as a measure of how 
> accurate its spotting is. Something to remember when running "normal" 
> validation.

During the development of Skimmer, I spent many hours doing manual 
analysis of Skimmer "runs" using manual lookups of QRZ (not just the FCC 
database) to make sure I caught all the busts.  However, use of the FCC 
database is a good idea, and can easily be incorporated into DXSpider as 
well.
>
> As skimmer operators can and do change validation levels it would be 
> nice to see what level they are currently using displayed in their 
> spots.  If using "aggressive" perhaps you could accept their spots 
> without further processing.  If "normal" then maybe you need several 
> "normals" that agree on the calls.

The RBN team is looking into this.

73, Pete N4ZR