[Skimmertalk] N4ZR ARRL DX CW - Skimmer experiences (Pete Smith)

[W3OA]

Hi Pete -

I'm sorry to hear your neck problems are serious enough to curtail your 
operating.  I hope they are solved soon.

And thank you for your report.  I'm wondering what settings you used on 
the "Calls" tab?

73 - Dick, W3OA
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:57:46 -0500
> From: Pete Smith <pete.n4zr at gmail.com> (by way of Pete Smith
> 	<n4zr at contesting.com>)
> Subject: [Skimmertalk] N4ZR ARRL DX CW - Skimmer experiences
> To: skimmertalk at contesting.com
> Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20090224065658.034365f8 at mail.comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> Knowing that my neck problems would prevent anything like a full-time 
> operation, I decided to live a normal weekend life, except for operating 
> sessions in the morning and afternoon.  That meant stopping for lunch and 
> dinner, almost no operating during hours of darkness (early Sunday AM 
> only), and only about 16 hours of operating time.  I decided to use the 
> contest mainly as a chance to test various tactics for using CW Skimmer - I 
> did not use an internet cluster.
>
> The results were pretty gratifying.  My overall rate of 93.5 QSOs/hour is 
> the best I've ever sustained in an ARRL DX contest, and I had a 147 hour 
> Sunday morning on 20.  Skimmer caught the brief 15 meter opening on 
> Saturday morning, and I used it in vain looking for another on 
> Sunday.  Most of the time, Skimmer was on the same band as my second radio, 
> looking for S&P QSOs (and particularly multipliers).  That allowed it to 
> work while I was running on the other radio, and it found more stations 
> than I could possibly work, given the run rates and my limited SO2R skills.
>
> However, the most useful tactic, I found, was to take the "opportunity" of 
> losing a run frequency to survey my current run band and see if there were 
> enough new running stations to warrant a quick S&P sweep of the 
> band.  Typically, 2 minutes spent with Skimmer on an open band would 
> produce spots of 200-275 stations (most of them dupes, of course). I would 
> then swap radios (Alt-F5 in N1MM Logger), and move quickly up or down the 
> band working the non-dupes.  Doing this, it was common to see my rate-meter 
> at 150+ for the last 10 QSOs, which made S&P this way almost as productive 
> as running on a good frequency.  On Sunday afternoon, I did a lot of this, 
> trying to boost my multiplier total, and found it interesting to see the 
> new waves of CQers show up on a given band, confirming what we know from 
> experience to be true.
>
> The European pileups were horrific - they sounded like packet pileups to 
> me, judging by the sudden onset, but looking at DX Summit I was surprised 
> by how few times I was actually spotted (though I wonder if some European 
> clusters are limited in their spot distribution to national 
> boundaries).  Perhaps it was just the ruckus on the run frequency that 
> attracts people.
>
> Anyway, a good time.
>
> 73, Pete N4ZR 
>
>
>
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> End of Skimmertalk Digest, Vol 9, Issue 8
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