I still think it is better to run CW Skimmer "skimming" signals heard via your own antenna and receiver and using SC connected to your own skimmer. 

Andy K3UK

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 3:15 PM Joe Subich, W4TV <lists@...> wrote:

On 2022-01-12 9:28 AM, Pete Smith wrote:
 >
> Their software has been stripped down for speed, and does not support
> any filtering, without which most users would agree that the spot
> volume is too high to be very useful.

Anyone who starts to get spots from a "retail" cluster that supports
skimmer spots may find that the volume is *still* too high to be useful
without filtering.

As we were testing what was released today as SC 9.0.5, I found it
necessary to turn off FT8 cluster spots to avoid bogging SC completely.
When I added a cluster with a feed from PSKreporter (those spots are
not reported to the RBN), I found it necessary to limit spots to only
a couple of "lower activity" bands (like 6m and 10m), again to avoid
bogging SC.

If you choose to enable "skimmer spots" - beware.  Particularly during
contests the skimmer feeds through the retail clusters are full of
"busted" spots.  For RTTY, in particular, those spots often come in
the form of an extra letter at the beginning (e.g., K1AA -> EK1AA) or
a dropped letter at the beginning (e.g. VE5AA -> E5AA or VE2ZZ -> E2ZZ).
Relying on the RBN's own busted call detection is not always enough as
the same mistake is being made by more than one independent skimmer
receiver (Q:# > 1).

73,

    ... Joe, W4TV


On 2022-01-12 9:28 AM, Pete Smith wrote:
> See
> https://reversebeacon.blogspot.com/2022/01/where-to-get-rbnspots-for-users-in-last.html.
> There are over 100 clusters carrying RBN CW and RTTY spots, and over 15
> (listed in the article) that carry FT8 spots from us.
>
> There was no "censorship" involved, by Dave or anyone else.  To set the
> record straight, we request that people *not* connect directly to the
> RBN's Telnet servers because those nodes are intended only to distribute
> spots to "retail" nodes for distribution to users.  Their software has
> been stripped down for speed, and does not support any filtering,
> without which most users would agree that the spot volume is too high to
> be very useful.
>
> 73, Pete N4ZR
> Check out the new Reverse Beacon Network
> web server at<http://beta.reversebeacon.net>.
> For spots, please use your favorite
> "retail" DX cluster.
>
> On 1/12/2022 7:31 AM, Anthony wrote:
>> Now that the RBN has been censored from Spot Collector, does someone
>> have a site that provides these spots?  Thanks for your help.
>> --
>>
>> Anthony - N2KI
>