Steve Bonine wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:
Has anyone tried out CW Skimmer?

I have to admit that I checked the calendar to be sure it wasn't April
after reading about this.

I did a little searching on the web and found the same sales pitch
repeated several times. I did find an article by Pete Smith N4ZR at
http://www.pvrc.org/~n4zr/Articles/Skimmer.pdf that had some real-world
data.

My question, based on limited experience with the ability of computers
to copy CW in less-than-ideal conditions, is how many of the signals on
a crowded contest band it would actually be able to successfully decode.
Maybe this technology has made great leaps forward since I last tried
to use it, but I just can't see it being effective enough to dig the
signals out of the QRM and parse out the callsign.

I didn't find any actual use in a contest, so such real-world experience
would be most interesting.

Hi Steve,

I've been experimenting with some of the CW reading and sending
software. due to my hearing issues. Background is that I have profound
tinnitus, don't hear much of anything over 2KHz, and weirdly enough, my
brain processes all sounds with equal weight. Noise is given equal
importance to what I actually want to listen to. So I can work CW if
condx are perfect, but most of the time I don't do very well.

Enough of my whining...


There is a new engine out there, of which I think Skimmer is using. I
have another program called MRP (something)that looks very similar. It
works very well indeed. It has that visual dot/dash display on a
horizontal waterfall, (also a big help) and the interesting thing is
that it seems to be doing something where it "looks behind" and will
sometimes correct itself as it goes along. I think that the software is
operating more akin to how humans decipher Morse.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -