[Elecraft] RE: New concept/tool for CW dxing

[Steve Ireland]

G’day

For those on the reflector who are wondering what this new ‘tool’ (VE3NEA’s
CW Skimmer) is like from a user’s point of view, see the review of
well-known contester Pete N4ZR at:

www.pvrc.org/~n4zr/Articles/Skimmer.pdf

I have used Alex’s 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 isn’t 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 let’s not get carried away here.  It also isn’t 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 isn’t 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)