6th May 2008

"Good-bye to good luck" i.e. my thoughts about CW Skimmer

When I first heard about CW Skimmer I was disappointed - my immediate thought, perhaps naively, was 'why would anyone wish to create software which does this ?'

I've read carefully the pros and cons, outlined in many different ways with varying degrees of emotive language, on the cq-contest reflector. Nothing I have read so far has changed my opinion that CW Skimmer will have a bad effect on CW contesting (and possibly DXing).

Will CW Skimmer work ? - yes of course it will - technology cannot be 'uninvented', so it will be refined - how well it actually works, how useful it will be and how many people use it, only time will tell. I have no real desire to use CW Skimmer.

Why am I against CW Skimmer - simple really, although it took a while for me to work it out - CW Skimmer is going to remove the element of *luck* that some contesters enjoy - every contest is a test of planning, preparation, technical knowledge, propagation knowledge, operating skill, etc, but also involves, even if only once during the whole contest, some lucky break - you find your 40th Zone with 5 minutes to go, you stumble across a 5R8 mult on an otherwise empty band, etc, etc.  These events are the rare moments which make that whole contest memorable and now software - used by others not me - might make experiencing these moments impossible.

In almost every major contest I've operated in, I've experienced these 'lucky' moments - lately it is usually finding a rare mult calling 'CQ' with no takers before the Cluster-driven pile-up swamps them (often these operators are not really contesters and are happy to call contest stations, but do not like pile-ups, especially the Cluster-driven ones where many of the callers cannot actually hear the rare mult)

So there we are - one man's completely unscientific view of why CW Skimmer is not such a great idea after all .....

73

Chris   GM3WOJ  GM7V  ZL1CT  ZL1V