Gday For those on the reflector who are wondering what this new tool (VE3NEAs CW Skimmer) is like from a users point of view, see the review of well-known contester Pete N4ZR at:
www.pvrc.org/~n4zr/Articles/Skimmer.pdf I have used Alexs Rocky software for the last eighteen months or so and, like Pete, am an alpha/beta tester of the big sister CW Skimmer software. It is an amazing program and was originally designed to help Alex VE3NEA to increase his operating efficiency in DX pileups when operating his 100W/dipole type station against those running 1.5kW and beam antennas. It is a fascinating program to use and has already been responsible for spotting a new 160m country for me, whilst I was (kindly) working a pileup of USA and JA stations on the same band. Whilst CW Skimmer spotted the station for me (as a packet cluster would have done), I still had to actually work the station through a large pile-up... ;-) Unfortunately, using the $75 CW Skimmer isnt going to help a little pistol beat the CQ WW score of a big gun contester who has a holiday QTH in the Caribbean with automatically tuned Alpha linears, stacked monobanders and four-squares, so lets not get carried away here. It also isnt going to make big gun operators of this kind any more invincible if they use it than they probably already are. ;-) On the other hand, owing to its speed of operation (when a DX station calls CQ, Skimmer is going to recognize their callsign very quickly, as long as their CW is half decent and isnt smothered in noise), it can help little pistols to work some new countries. I really like Skimmer and regard it as the best operating tool in my DXing arsenal. Of course, coupled with a K3 and using IF-based Q5er/panadaptor, its mojo may just be amazing! To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of real CW operation now that CW Skimmer has arrived is greatly exaggerated. Vy 73 Steve, VK6VZ (FOC #1693) _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
