so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for maybe two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the QSL management and the award tracking is great but every time a big contest rolls around i feel like im fighting the software a little bit. like during the ARRL DX last month i kept fumbling around trying to get the rate window visible and the bandmap wasnt behaving the way i expected

a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just run N1MM for contests and keep Log4OM for everything else, export the ADIF after and import it. seems like extra steps but maybe thats just how people do it. also ive been running WSJT-X on the side for FT8 and right now Log4OM is handling the integration fine through UDP but i heard N1MM can also receive the WSJT-X spots somehow and i havent dug into that yet

curious if anyone actually runs this kind of split setup or if you just picked one and stuck with it. im not a hardcore contester, maybe 4-5 contests a year, field day, the usual

yeah the split setup is pretty much what most people end up doing honestly. N1MM is just built for contesting in a way that nothing else really matches, the function key macros and the way it handles multipliers and the rate display are all kind of optimized for that specific use case. Log4OM is excellent software but its not really trying to be a contest logger first

for the WSJT-X thing, N1MM doesnt directly integrate with WSJT-X the same way Log4OM does, what most people do is run WSJT-X logging to its own ADIF file and then import that seperately after the contest if any of those contacts count. during a phone or CW contest youre probably not running FT8 anyway so it might not even matter for your situation

the ADIF import into Log4OM after the contest works fine, ive been doing it for years, just watch for dupes if youre importing into a log that already has some of those calls from other operating

i just use N1MM for everything during contest season and honestly stopped worrying about it. the learning curve felt steep at first but once you get your macro files set up for your common exchange types it becomes pretty automatic. the bandmap pulls from the telnet cluster and its fast

Log4OM is where all my contacts live permanently though, so yeah i do the ADIF export/import thing after every contest. takes like two minutes