so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for a couple years now and honestly love it for day to day stuff, the QSO management and the LoTW sync is pretty solid and the interface doesnt drive me crazy. but every time a contest rolls around i find myself firing up N1MM because thats just what everyone told me to use when i started contesting and i never really questioned it.

lately ive been wondering if theres a better workflow here. running two separate programs feels clunky especially when i want my contest QSOs to actually end up in Log4OM without importing and reformatting and hoping the ADIF doesnt mangle something. ive had a couple of dupes slip through because of that exact problem during a state QSO party last year.

also on top of all this im trying to integrate WSJT-X for FT8 and that adds yet another layer. WSJT-X will log to its own file and ive got it kind of pointed at Log4OM via UDP but it doesnt always behave. sometimes entries show up twice, sometimes the signal report comes through weird. feels like im duct taping three programs together and hoping for the best.

anyone actually sorted this out in a clean way or is running multiple logging programs just the reality of this hobby? curious if anybody went all-in on N1MM for everything including day to day logging or if thats a miserable experience outside of contests.

yeah the multi-program thing is just kind of... how it is for a lot of us unfortunately. i run N1MM for any serious contesting and Log4OM for everything else and honestly the ADIF import into Log4OM after a contest works fine most of the time if you just make sure you export clean from N1MM. the one gotcha i kept hitting was the exchange fields not mapping right but once i figured out which Log4OM fields to map them to it stopped being a problem.

the WSJT-X double logging thing is a known headache. you basically have to pick ONE program to receive the UDP broadcasts and make sure the other isnt also listening on the same port, thats usually what causes dupes showing up. i have WSJT-X talking to Log4OM and i just disabled the N1MM integration entirely on days im not contesting. not elegant but it works.

i wouldnt try to use N1MM as your daily logger, its really not built for browsing old QSOs or award tracking or any of that. its a race car not a daily driver.

Ive been down this exact rabbit hole. Spent about a weekend trying to get a clean WSJT-X to Log4OM to N1MM pipeline and eventually just gave up on making it seamless. What I do now is keep Log4OM as the master log and after any contest I do a careful ADIF import with duplicate checking turned on. Loses maybe 20 minutes but I stopped having weird sync issues.

One thing worth mentioning — Log4OM 2 has a contest module built in now and for smaller contests it actually works ok, I used it for a VHF contest a while back and it handled the grid square multipliers fine. Wouldnt use it for CQWW or anything big but if you're doing like a regional thing it might be enough to just stay in one program the whole time. Might be worth a look before you resign yourself to the two-program life forever.