[Skimmertalk] Skimmer Tests during SS

[Pete Smith]

I have posted the full report at 
http://www.pvrc.org/~n4zr/K5QQ%20Skimmer%20Test%20-%202008%20SS.pdf

His statistics are very interesting.  However, I'm a little skeptical about 
Jim's conclusion that I quoted below.  In my tests, if anything, Skimmer 
does not identify *enough* of the stations that are running.  It relies on 
markers in the stations' transmissions, such as QRZ, TEST,or CQ.  If a 
station is running on a frequency, just signing [call] TU or[call] UP, then 
Skimmer doesn't know that he is "CQ-ing."

I suspect that part of the problem Jim encountered is due to SO2R stations 
CQing, and then taking a pretty long time to work someone they find on the 
second radio.  The issue with busted calls is real, of course, and many of 
them are going to be legitimate calls, because even in Aggressive mode 
Skimmer is relying on patterns rather than a positive list.  If you want to 
cut way down on the number of busted calls, switch to Paranoid, and make 
sure Skimmer is pointed to a current master.dta file.

73, Pete

   At 05:36 PM 11/14/2008, Jim Baremore wrote:
>I performed this evaluation at 8 different intervals during the contest and
>did evaluations on 20, 40 and 80.  All total 359 spots were tested.  Of
>those, only 111 were the station CW Skimmer was indicated on the frequency.
>30 were for a station whose callsign was close but which I judged Skimmer
>had missed a dit or something and mangled it into another call.
>Interestingly enough, the mangled call was still a valid FCC call.  Finally,
>218 spots were for stations no longer on the frequency.  Most likely they
>were stations just worked by the station running the frequency.