[GreenKeys] RTTY North American QSO Party - Some RBN statistics

[William Wuttke]

All,

The “RBN” is the “Reverse Beacon Network” (http://www.reversebeacon.net). On their welcome page they say:

The Reverse Beacon Network is a revolutionary new idea. Instead of beacons actively transmitting signals, the RBN is a network of stations listening to the bands and reporting what stations they hear, when and how well.

It is comprised of a loose network of hams who have skimmers set up at their location. A skimmer is a program running on a PC connected to a Software Defined Radio (SDR) that is connected to a wideband antenna. The skimmer program (either CW skimmer or RTTY skimmer) listens to an entire band segment (or multiple segments) for traffic and through another program (Aggregator) reports the results to the RBN server. There is only one place you can get skimmer servers: http://www.dxatlas.com/SkimServer. There is a good presentation at:

https://www.contestuniversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/4.-N6TV-CW-and-RTTY-Skimmers-and-the-Reverse-Beacon-Network.pdf

I started using the RBN two years ago when I discovered it and with it I can send a couple of CQs on my teletype (or RTTY program) and look at the RBN main page to see who has heard me. I can set up a filter to show only RTTY signals on specific bands and other criteria. This told me that my RTTY signal was propagating well to stations in the northeast and northwest. There aren’t a lot of RTTY skimmers out there, but you can get an idea of who can hear you.

The only time you see more than a couple of RTTY signals each day is during a contest.

Hope this helps. Visit the Reverse Beacon Network website and look around.

73,
Bill
KE3BK


> On Mar 3, 2020, at 7:15 AM, Duncan Brown <duncanancy at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> Bill,
> 
> I don't know what an "RBN"  is either.
> 
> I know what a "skimmer" is, but where do we find the RTTY skimmers?
> 
> Thanks & have fun,
> 
> Duncan
> K2OEQ

> On Mar 3, 2020, at 6:43 AM, W2HX <w2hx at w2hx.com> wrote:
> 
> What is an RBN? What is a skimmer? Sorry if I'm the only one who doesn't know these terms. thanks
> 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net <greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net> On Behalf Of William Wuttke
> Sent: Monday, March 2, 2020 5:05 PM
> To: Greenkeys <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
> Subject: [GreenKeys] RTTY North American QSO Party - Some RBN statistics
> 
> In case anyone might be interested:
> 
> Just for fun I downloaded the RBN logs for Feb 29 and Mar 1, created a database and did some queries. Here are some statistics for that period (if my queries were correct):
> 
> 1. There were 129,730 RTTY entries (includes duplicates).
> 2. There were 32 RTTY skimmers worldwide online, with 19 in North America.
> 3. There were 1383 individual RTTY callsigns heard worldwide, with 1307 heard in North America.
> 4. My skimmer heard 105 individual RTTY callsigns.
> 
> 73,
> Bill
> KE3BK
> 
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