for the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN). This is not a simple client, it
attempts to make some sense of the 10s of 1000s of "spots" that the
RBN can send PER HOUR. At busy times, actually nearly all the time, the
-spots from the RBN come in too fast for anybody to get anything more
+spots from the RBN come in too quickly for anybody to get anything more
than a fleeting impression of what's coming in.
Something has to try to make this manageable - which is what I have
The RBN has a number of problems (apart from the overwhelming quantity
of data that it sends):
-* Spotted callsigns, especially on CW, and not reliably
+* Spotted callsigns, especially on CW, are not reliably
decoded. Estimates vary as to how bad it is but, as far as I can
tell, even these estimates are unreliable!
* The format of the comment is not regular. If one has both FTx and
"all the other" spots (CW, PSK et al) enabled at the same time,
one's eye is constantly having to re-adjust. Again, very difficult
- to deal with on contest days.
+ to deal with on contest days. Especially if it mixed in with
+ "normal" spots.
-
-So what have I done about this:
-
-* As you can see, there are frequently more than one spotter for a
-callsign:
+So what have I done about this? Look at the sample of input traffic
+below:
05Jul2020@22:59:31 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de KM3T-2-#: 14100.0 CS3B CW 24 dB 22 WPM NCDXF B 2259Z
05Jul2020@22:59:31 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de KM3T-2-#: 28263.9 AB8Z/B CW 15 dB 18 WPM BEACON 2259Z
05Jul2020@22:59:40 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de HB9DCO-#: 7018.2 RW1M CW 25 dB 18 WPM CQ 2259Z
05Jul2020@22:59:40 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de EA5WU-#: 7018.3 RW1M CW 19 dB 18 WPM CQ 2259Z
+* As you can see, there are frequently more than one spotter for a
+ callsign:
+
* I normalise the frequency and cache up to 9 copies from different
-spots. In order to do this I have to wait a few (comfigurable) seconds
-for the client to collect a reasonable number of copies. More copies
-may come in after 9 copies have been. Once I have enough copies to be
-sure that the callsign is at least agreeed upon by more than one
-skimmer, or the wait timer goes off, I emit a spot. An example of
-which is shown above in the spot sent to G1TST. By this means I can
-reduce the number of spots sent to a node user by up to a factor of 10
-for CW etc spots and about 8 for FTx spots.
+ spots. In order to do this I have to wait a few (comfigurable) seconds
+ for the client to collect a reasonable number of copies. More copies
+ may come in after 9 copies have been received. Once I have enough
+ copies to be sure that the callsign is at least agreeed upon by more
+ than one skimmer, or the wait timer goes off, I emit a spot. By this
+ means I can reduce the number of spots sent to a node user by up to a
+ factor of 10 for CW etc spots and about 8 for FTx spots.
+
+ For example, from the trace above, all the RW1M RBN spots become just
+ one line:
+
+DX de F8DGY-#: 7018.3 RW1M CW 23dB Q:9* Z:20 16 2259Z 14
* No RBN spots can leak out of the node to the general cluster. Each
node that wants to use the RBN *must* establish their own
connections to the RBN.
* Currently no RBN spots are stored. This may well change but how and
- where these spots are stored is not yet decided. Only "new" spots
- will be stored (if they are).
+ where these spots are stored is not yet decided. Only "DXSpider
+ curated" spots (like the example above) will be stored (if/when they
+ are). Sh/dx will be suitably modified if storage happens.
-* There are some things that need to be said:
+* There are some things that need to be explained:
a) The input format from the RBN is not the same as format emitted by
the cluster node. This is part of the unhelpfulness to mixing a raw
but currently 60 minutes) and gaps for QSOs or tea breaks are ignored,
then a '+' character will be added.
+If the "Qualitee" Q:1 is seen on a CW spot, then only one skimmer has
+seen that spot and the callsign *could* be wrong, but frequently, if
+it is wrong, it is more obvious than the example below. But if Q is
+Q:2 and above, then the callsign is much more likely to be correct.
+
+DX de DJ9IE-#: 14034.9 UN7BBD CW 4dB Q:5*+ 17 1444Z 14
+DX de OL7M-#: 14037.9 UA6LQ CW 13dB Q:7 16 1448Z 15
+DX de LZ3CB-#: 28050.2 DL4HRM CW 7dB Q:1 14 1448Z 20
+
c) I ditch the WPM and the 'CQ' as not being hugely relevant.
d) If there is a Z:nn[,mm...] is there it means that this call was also heard
can be activated with a 'set/dxcq' command. This is completely
optional.
-e) I shorten the skimmer callsign to 6 characters, before (re-)adding
-'-#' on the end to minimise the movement rightwards as in the incoming
-spot from KO7SS-7-# just two lines below G1TST. There are some very
-strange skimmer callsigns.
+DX de LZ4UX-#: 14015.5 ON7TQ CW 6dB Q:9 Z:5,14,15,40 14 0646Z 20
+DX de VE7CC-#: 3573.0 N8ADO FT8 -14dB Q:4 Z:4,5 4 0647Z 3
+DX de DM7EE-#: 14027.5 R1AC CW 9dB Q:9* Z:5,15,17,20 16 0643Z 14
+DX de WE9V-#: 7074.0 EA7ALL FT8 -9dB Q:2+ Z:5 14 0641Z 4
+
+e) I shorten the skimmer callsign to 6 characters - having first
+chopped off any SSIDs, spurious /xxx strings from the end leaving just
+the base callsign, before (re-)adding '-#' on the end. This is done to
+minimise the movement rightwards as in the incoming spot from
+KO7SS-7-# below. There are some very strange skimmer callsigns with
+all sorts of spurious endings, all of which I attempt to reduce to the
+base callsign. Some skimmer base callsigns still might be shortened
+for display purposes. Things like '3V/K5WEM' won't fit in six
+characters but the whole base callsign is used for zone info,
+internally, but only the first 6 characters are displayed in any
+spot. See KO7SS-7-# below:
+
+05Jul2020@22:59:39 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de HB9JCB-#: 3516.9 RA1AFT CW 9 dB 26 WPM CQ 2259Z
+05Jul2020@22:59:39 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de KO7SS-7-#: 14057.6 K7GT CW 6 dB 21 WPM CQ 2259Z
+05Jul2020@22:59:39 (chan) <- I SK0MMR DX de K9LC-#: 28169.9 VA3XCD/B CW 9 dB 10 WPM BEACON 2259Z
f) I have a filter set (accept/spot by_zone 14 and not zone 14 or zone
14 and not by_zone 14) which will give me the first spot that either
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