[Skimmertalk] Automated periodic CQ & QSY?

[Rick Kiessig]

To answer a few of the recent questions/concerns:

1. Sending your call and the word TEST with no intention of having someone
answer is allowed by ZL rules; it's no different than what a beacon does. I
could also add a "/B" to my call to make it explicit.
2. Yes, I know I could write some software myself to do this; I was just
asking here to see if I could save some effort. My target rig is an
FTdx-5000, although if I write the code myself, I might target OmniRig.
3. My intention is not to send an unattended CQ every 5 seconds all day long
forever and ever. My goal is to measure propagation. To do that, I only need
to call CQ between two and four times, about once an hour for 24 hours, on
each band of interest, and only a few days a year (such as the day before a
contest).
4. VE3NEA's Faros program is cool for what it does, but it only listens, and
there are only a relatively small number of NXDXF beacons; you get a much
different picture of propagation when you are transmitting, particularly
when your signal is picked up from multiple Skimmers.
5. Collisions / QRM with others would be minimal due to the short TX-on
time, and could be minimized further by looking at incoming RBN and/or local
Skimmer data when choosing a frequency and by using less-popular parts of
each band, in the segments where Skimmer listens.

I suspect calling CQ to check propagation using Skimmer is already being
done by quite a few people, on an informal basis. In the long run, it might
be nice to set some guidelines around the process, such as particular
frequency ranges or a marker after your callsign, for example, so others
know what you're doing.

73, Rick ZL2HAM