You open the cluster, you see a spot for a rare station on 10 metres and you ask yourself the only question that really matters: will I hear it?
Until now the only way to answer it was to go to the radio and try. And often the answer was no: the spot had been sent by someone four thousand kilometres away, with propagation that has nothing to do with yours.
In the cluster table at dxcontest.org there is a column called Rx that answers before you touch the dial. It has four possible answers.
I am Pascual, EA5WU, the one who runs the site. I have written an article and I think it may interest you.
“This is not one more feature: it is the end of a road. The cluster and the automatic listening networks (PSKReporter, RBN…) have spent years running in parallel, each with its own audience and its own defenders, without touching at any point. At dxcontest.org they converge at last, and in the simplest way I could manage: a column with a green dot if that station is being heard from your zone, on that band and in that mode, or amber if there is at least propagation open between your zone and theirs.
The spot is still sent by a person, with their comment and their judgement; what changes is that it now arrives enriched with what the automatic networks contribute, and with that the old dilemma between the human and the automatic dissolves by itself: there stop being two places to look.”
https://dxcontest.org/blog/en/cluster-2-0.html
73,
Pascual — EA5WU