[UK-CONTEST] CW Skimmer

[Dave Lawley]

I'm with Chris on this one. There are numerous examples in sport of 
technology which is considered inappropriate and therefore placed 
outside the rules. Think of Grand Prix, or Yachting, or many disciplines 
within athletics.

Within ham radio contesting we have already considered packet cluster to 
be sufficiently different from straight single-op that it has its own 
section or is bracketed with multi-op. I believe that Skimmer is 
potentially even more damaging to CW contesting. You'll end up with 
nothing more than a point-and-click computer game, and not a very good 
one at that. I don't want you to do that to CW contesting. That will be 
the end of the hobby for me.

Dave G4BUO


Dave Sergeant wrote:
> On 1 May 2008 at 22:34, G3SXW wrote:
> 
>> This petition recommends banning CW Skimmer altogether. Daft! Instead
>> let's have a category called 'Unlimited' where all modern tools are
>> encouraged. So long as the pure Single-Op category is preserved then
>> it will always be by far the most popular. 73 de Roger/G3SXW.
> 
> I would tend to agree with Roger. Having had a little play with 
> CWSkimmer a few weeks ago I was singularly unimpressed and despite 
> the glowing article in RadCom see it just as a gimmick, quite limited 
> in its capabilities compared with what a good CW operator can do. Its 
> possible effects on contests have been grossly over-rated - it may be 
> that a few (very few) entrants will be unable to maintain their 
> leading scores and overtaken by skimmer ops, but by and large all it 
> will do is attract new entrants, way down the table (like me...) who 
> would not normally have had the ability or inclination to have a go 
> in these events.
> 
> A petition in this case seems inappropriate. Just let it run for a 
> year or two then people will realise it is an application which has 
> no potential and it will quietly disappear.
> 
> 73 Dave G3YMC
> 
> http://www.davesergeant.com