CW Skimmer Wins Dayton Hamvention Pileup Contest

The Kansas City DX Club Pileup Contest is an annual bragging rights event for the serious CW operator in ham radio. This year's contest offered up a bit of a different competitor -- CW Skimmer, that often maligned software program that attempts to copy Morse code using digital dits and dahs wrapped in binary computer code. Since Morse code and computer code are both binary in nature, you'd think our computer binary friends would get along well. And they did.The big 2009 winner of the Kansas City DX Club was Skimmer, with 61 accurate calls counted in the pileup contest, besting the number one human form of VE3DZ with 51 accurate calls.Skimmer is still controversial in contesting circles. But a tool like that in a DX pileup is a cool thing to have. Even in contests.