so ive been running WSJT-X for FT8 for about a year now and just using the built in logging to ADIF and then importing to Log4OM after the fact which honestly works fine for casual operating but im starting to do a few contests here and there, did the ARRL DX CW last year with a borrowed station and caught the bug pretty bad

the thing is Log4OM is really nice for day to day stuff, club log integration works, lotw sync is solid, i like the interface but when i was trying to use it during a contest it just felt sluggish or maybe i was doing it wrong, the rate tracking wasnt really there and i kept losing my place in the bandmap

a buddy at the club says just run N1MM for contests and keep Log4OM for everything else and use the export to merge logs afterward but that sounds like a recipe for duplicate headaches. does anyone actually do this two-software workflow and does it hold up or am i overthinking it

also curious if anyone has WSJT-X talking to N1MM directly during like an FT8 contest, i know theres a UDP port thing but i never got it configured right

yeah the two-software thing is what most serious contesters do and honestly its not as bad as you'd think once you get the ADIF import dialed in. N1MM is just in another league for contesting, theres really no comparison when it comes to rate display, the function key macros, the networked multi-op stuff if you ever get to that point. Log4OM is great but its trying to be a general logger and a contest logger and kind of does both okay instead of one thing really well

for the WSJT-X to N1MM UDP thing, go into WSJT-X settings under the Reporting tab and set the UDP server to 127.0.0.1 port 2333, and in N1MM make sure UDP is enabled under config. it should just start populating. i had it working in maybe 10 minutes once i actually read the N1MM documentation instead of just guessing at it

duplicates between the two logs are annoying but not a disaster, i usually just do an ADIF merge in Log4OM and let it skip dupes by callsign and band. never had a serious problem with it

i dont do many contests but i had the same WSJT-X integration question a while back. the UDP logging works but i remeber reading somewhere that for FT8 sprint type contests N1MM doesnt always decode the exchange fields correctly from the WSJT-X UDP messages and you end up having to hand edit some QSOs. might have been fixed by now, that was maybe 18 months ago i read that thread on the N1MM reflector

personally i just kept everything in Log4OM and accepted that my contest scores werent optimized, but im not exactly trying to win anything so it doesnt bother me much