[UK-CONTEST] Prediction on Skimmer

[Lee Volante]

Hi Bob, all,

Could you define what you mean by 'Skimmer' please ?   It's not meant to be
a facetious question.  I understand the debate is over "Skimmer and
Skimmer-like programs and technologies", but sometimes it's a little
difficult to understand exactly where the concern lies.

I'm using Writelog this morning in the ARI DX contest.  I've just turned on
the CW decoding feature, which is decoding the callsigns I tune over, but
it's not providing me much (any?) benefit.  Maybe it's doing similar to the
(allowed) SuperCheckPartial if I struggle over a high speed H or S?   I've
been able to do this for years, if I so chose.  (What contest class am I
entering in now, as I claim 'no benefit' and 'no outside assistance', and
also in this very same contest I use the PC to decode RTTY ?  For some
people, both modes are 'data modes' that cannot be decoded by ear. For
others, one is copied by ear, the other needs a PC.  For others yet, some
information from the RTTY transmission can be detected aurally.)

If I didn't know CW at all, I'd be getting a bigger benefit from this.  If I
tuned a receiver over 7 MHz at the same time I'm receiving on 14 MHz, I'm
getting an extra benefit as I can't usually receive two CW callsigns in my
head at the same time. Perhaps I could receive a call on a second band
whilst I'm TX'ing on the first, as per common SO2R behaviour, but two
callsigns at once is a bit much for me. If I wired up all my computers and
radios and expanded the scenario, I could start to populate a bandmap, and
turn "Search and Pounce" into "Point and Click" which many see as spoiling
the traditional SOAB Unassisted game.

What I'm trying to say is that there's a sliding scale of "Skimmer-ness" and
the threshold at which it becomes unpleasant for people seems to have a wide
variance.  I propose that this seems to be the problem.  Here and on
CQ-Contest there's not a concensus of what everyone's getting upset about,
nor what limits could be imposed. In some cases, Skimmer is perhaps unfairly
getting a bad rep for having scope to destroy the hobby as some people know
it.  It'll be a swine for contest sponsors to come up with wording for rules
that are relatively future proof, encompass the present and near-future
technology, provide harmonisation to CW, SSB and Data contests, and not be
excluding those that use technology to supplement or assist with their own
CW skills whilst learning.  To add the words "No Skimmer allowed" to the
rules for SO Unassisted can't be enough by itself.

I don't know the answer - apart from suggesting that where whatever
technology gives an advantage over what a human *could* do by themselves,
this activity rules them out of the SOAB Unassisted category.  Memory keyer?
Computer logging?  As a human I could do as well myself without these aids,
so I'm unassisted.  One (maybe two) RX feeds from a Skimmer-like
application?  It's just like SO2R - so I'm still (maybe) unassisted ?  I
could do this myself with practice. Increase to 10 or 200 simultaneous
decodes - I can't hope to match this, so now this activity could become
Assisted.  A line would still need to be drawn in the ground by sponsors to
decide the cutoff, as there's still no natural break.

73,

Lee G0MTN

> IMO the SOAB category represents the greatest test of operator skill.  I
> believe steps should be taken to ensure this continues to be the case.
> To that end, I believe you would be better off with a petition which
> focuses on the exclusion of Skimmer from deployment in any single
> operator Unassisted category.  In the absence of such a petition, I
> encourage all interested parties to lobby contest organisers directly.
>
> 73
>
> Bob, 5B4AGN