Over at the excellent radio-sport.net site, Jamie, NS3T reports that there's been no official comment on the use of CW Skimmer in contests and whether use of the tool would automatically bump the user into the 'Assisted' category.
Gut reaction: It's hard to imagine that contest organisers would not view it this way. Essentially it acts like a DX Cluster, showing all the stations that are active.
Logic: But wait! The CW Skimmer is just reporting what your rig's hearing - no-one else is entering the data and assisting you. No-one else's station is involved.
Gut reaction: But it's the computer doing all the work? OK - if it's the computer doing the decoding and not you, it must be 'Assisted'.
Logic: Hold on there! Can't fault the thinking, but what else are we having the computer doing in our station? Logging, sending morse - it's doing all those things - assisting the operator. Is CW Skimmer really that different?
Gut feel tells me it is - and that use of CW Skimmers in contests should result in instant 'Assisted' classification. Logic is not so clear cut and you can see why the contest committees are not exactly rushing to make their position clear!
CW Skimmer in contests - yup, it IS that complicated!
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