[Dxspider-support] upcoming release

scarroll at mchsi.com scarroll at mchsi.com
Wed Dec 31 17:06:37 GMT 2003


I'd like to clarify a bit regarding the 'New Mail' enhancement I've suggested. 
As always, I appreciate Charlie's (K1XX) comments and the fact that he is 
looking at this with a contester's viewpoint. In this light, I completely agree 
that anyone running in a contest (which I've done my share of with PVRC) surely 
doesn't want to be bothered with 'New Mail' notifications, etc.

However, the cluster I run is for the North Alabama DX Club (W4QB). Our primary 
concern is DXing. We do have many DXers who also participate in contests, along 
with others who use the cluster to work a new country during a contest weekend. 
The flavor of our club is NOT anti-contest, but our cluster is part of an 
almost extinct breed (pre-historic) of 'RF only' network. In fact, W4QB is the 
only DX Spider node in the network (the others are still running on old DOS 
machines with AK1A software) with access to the internet to provide 'DX Spots'. 
During normal operation I have the "acc/spot by_dxcc k" filter running to keep 
things active on the vhf/uhf packet frequencies (we sure can't be accused of 
having no activity and risk losing those frequencies). However, on contest 
weekends, I pull the "by_dxcc k" filter setting and impose strictly regional 
filters which only allow spots originated from surrounding states. This doesn't 
affect those users who are connected via telnet, only the nodes/users on the RF 
side. Our philosophy is that anyone who is SERIOUS about using W4QB cluster (or 
any RF cluster) for their contesting should be connected via telnet and NOT via 
RF ports. Besides, our RF network would be extremely backlogged/saturated if I 
didn't impose strict spot filtering (which feeds the entire RF backbone across 
4 states).

I do believe that any 'New Mail' notification should have the capability of the 
SysOp turning it on/off. Also, I don't think the user should be able to turn it 
on/off. But, if it's decided to give them the capability the switch should be 
defaulted to "ON" unless the user manually changes it.

That's my additional 2 cents worth !!!

Happy New Year !!!

73, Steve - K2SC

 




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