[Skimmertalk] Newbie questions

Pete Smith N4ZR n4zr at contesting.com
Fri Jul 17 14:47:38 EDT 2015


Bill and Dave.  You can blacklist callsigns in the Aggregator to prevent 
their being sent up to the mother ship, but I suspect the best thing is 
to disable the QS1R insofar as that can be done without killing the 
power to it, which will kill the FPGA load. I open the antenna input and 
drop the power to my Clifton Labs preamp, and that seems to eliminate 
false positives.

Incidentally, a lot of people, including me, find that the QS1R lacks 
sensitivity above 14 MHz.  I use the Cliffton preamp all the time, 
because it has such good strong signal handling.and moderate gain - only 
about 11 dB - that it is not a problem on the low bands.  He also makes 
a higher gain unit with similar characteristics that may be helpful on 6M.

73, Pete N4ZR
Download the new N1MM Logger+ at
<http://N1MM.hamdocs.com>. Check
out the Reverse Beacon Network at
<http://reversebeacon.net>, now
spotting RTTY activity worldwide.
For spots, please use your favorite
"retail" DX cluster.

On 7/17/2015 10:08 AM, Dave Pascoe wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 10:01 AM, William Hein <bill.aa7xt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> First newbie question, I have Skimmer Server running on 6 bands under
>> W0LFA-# since yesterday afternoon.
>>
>> 40m
>> 30m
>> 20m
>> 17m
>> 15m
>> 10m
>>
>> Skimmers Online just shows 3 bands for W0LFA. Is this because MUF hasn't
>> popped above 20m here in DM59pa yet this morning thus no recent higher band
>> decodes?
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>
>> ------
>>
>> Second newbie question. I have pretty good separation between my Pixel Loop
>> (connected to QS1R) and my TX antennas so I don't bother muting QS1R during
>> TX periods. The CLP light on my QS1R is not lighting so I think I'm OK
>> there. Likewise, I don't seem to have blown up the Pixel preamp.
>>
>> However, I see phantom decodes of my own callsign on, for example, on 17m
>> and 10m when I am txing on 20m. I have "AA7XT" in the Bad Calls file in
>> Aggregator 4.1 yet I still see my call show up on Aggregator Spot Display
>> on the correct and phantom frequencies. How do I get Skimmer Server and/or
>> Aggregator to ignore "AA7XT"?
>>
>
> I have grappled with this here.  No matter how much separation you have
> it's difficult to prevent this on the same property.  Despite not lighting
> the CLIP LED there is something going non-linear.  Skimmer Server is pretty
> sensitive.  I have even had issues when opening or grounding the QS1R input
> while on transmit.  Since you probably have better separation than I do, I
> would try wiring in a relay to open the input to the QS1R and see how that
> does.
>
>
>
>> _____
>>
>> What analysis tools are available to review the spots one's own Skimmer
>> Server detects? Would like to organize and analyze this from time to time.
>>
>
> Probably the most flexible way right now is to download and look at the raw
> data:
> http://reversebeacon.net/raw_data/
>
>
> 73,
> Dave
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