Thursday 21 February 2013

DX expeditions - CW Skimmers



There have been a few DX expeditions in the last while that were fairly difficult to work. The response and behavior from the expedition station is erratic and out of synch. At times they work a bunch of stations in a row and it is near impossible to determine where the DX station is listening and who he is working where. Furthermore, after some 10 calls I decide to stop calling and out of the blue, some 30 seconds later the station responds with “ZS6A 5NN”.

I could not understand this erratic or strange behavior until the penny dropped. They are most likely using CW skimmer software. They simply respond to the list of decoded calls they see on the screen.

Heck, I am all for using technology to the fullest, but this “style” of operation will take me a while to get used to. I still prefer working the masters of the ‘mojo mode’, they deserve our respect.

I guess if it is a choice of machine decoded CW vs. no CW, then there is no argument. They must use whatever they must use, as long as they work CW.

Long live CW.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Pierre, interesting as I don't know CW and this way would be excellent for me (shame?). I just pick a freq. and let my computer call in CW then look at the (live) log if I made it. Yep, every mode has something we don't like. I keep it at SSB so far, but I want to learn CW somewhere in the future. 73, Bas

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