One of my main concerns, as mentioned in my original post, is that several
skimmers interpreted K0ZR as K1ZR thus making appear as if was operating on
Sunday. If I had been operating on the same band at the same time as K0ZR
would I be flagged for duel CQing on the same band? I appreciate the skimmer
technology and have great respect for those responsible for it's
development. From a selfish standpoint I love being spotted and can deal with
the massive influx of zero beaters as long I can keep the rate up. My concern
is related more to how the RBN data is used (if at all) by the
contest organizers when auditing certain aspects of an entrants operation to
help crack down on dishonest participants. With human induced cluster
spots it's more acceptable to discount a bad spot due to someone improperly
copying the call and/or fat fingering the entry. With the skimmer, one may
assume that if it detected callsign than it must be a more probable spot. I
think we need to take a closer look at the way in which the spots are
represented such as an accuracy or probability index. I really don't know what
the right answer is....many of you donate your valuable time and talent to the
contesting community and many of us tend to take what you have developed for
granted and provide negative feedback without proposing a solution. I
certainly hope that stations using RBN data take the time to validate a spot by
copying the callsign before logging the qso, however I'm certain this isn't
happening as frequently as it should. I'm sure that several stations
logged K0ZR as K1ZR last Sunday, and if I had actually been active, running on
the band, I may have been passed over by a station that logged my call sign
earlier when they had actually worked K0ZR from a skimmer spot.
I'm curious to know what percentage of cluster spots represent skimmer vs
manually inputted during a 48 hour DX contest. Does anyone have those metrics?
-Shane
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Adams" <mda@n1en.org>
To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 12:31:51 AM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Skimmer accuracy...
I wonder if there's a way to do that now, with the information already
being provided.
You have multiple skimmers reporting one or two callsigns at a given
frequency in a short period of time. Each skimmer provides information
about s/n and speed.
Rather than have the skimmers opine on the confidence of their information,
have the loggers/spot collection software parse that data to elect from
incoming skimmer spots at a given frequency, within a certain period of
time. Use some function based on s/n ratios reported and code speed to
weight the incoming spots. Best score wins.
Granted, a unique filter is probably sufficient to block the bad
spots....but it sounds like a fun bit of logic to attempt.
--
*Michael D. Adams* (N1EN)
Poquonock, Connecticut | mda@n1en.org
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Jack Haverty. <k3fiv@arrl.net> wrote:
>
> If the Skimmers could produce spots that contained not only a callsign but
> also a "confidence", consumers further down the line (e.g., contest
> programs displaying spots) could filter those spots based on confidence -
> e.g., only display spots that are high confidence.
>
>
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