so ive been using N1MM for contests for a few years now and honestly its great for that, no complaints really, but for everyday QSO logging its kind of a pain to deal with outside of contest mode. i tried setting it up for general logging a while back and it just felt clunky compared to what i wanted.

somebody at the club mentioned Log4OM and i downloaded it but havent really dug in yet. looks like it does a lot more for day to day stuff — awards tracking, LoTW integration, all that. but my concern is the contest side of things. i do mostly state QSO parties and the occasional ARRL contest, nothing super serious, and i really dont want to give up N1MM for that because muscle memory at this point.

what are people actually doing here — running two separate programs and importing logs, or is there a cleaner way to handle this? also curious how WSJT-X fits in for people who do both FT8 and CW contesting. right now i have WSJT-X logging to a separate ADIF and then importing into N1MM after the fact which feels wrong but it works i guess.

any thoughts appreciated, especially if you've actually run Log4OM alongside N1MM rather than just read about it

yeah i basically have the same setup you described — N1MM for contests, Log4OM for everything else. been doing it for probably two years now and honestly it works fine once you get the ADIF import dialed in. Log4OM is pretty solid for tracking confirmed QSLs and it handles LoTW sync way better than trying to do it through N1MM in non-contest mode.

for WSJT-X i just have it pointed at a UDP port that Log4OM is listening on, so FT8 contacts go straight in during casual operating. when im contesting with WSJT-X i switch the UDP destination over to N1MM and then import to Log4OM after. its an extra step but takes like two minutes so i stopped caring. the duplicate checking in Log4OM is good enough that i havent had issues with doubled entries.

one thing i will say — make sure you set up the Log4OM contest module if you havent, its actually more capable than it looks at first glance, but for serious contesting N1MM is still a different league in terms of how fast everything flows. the bandmap integration and the rate display alone are worth keeping it around for.

im probably not the best person to ask since i only do FT8 and the occasional SSB ragchew but for what its worth i just use Log4OM for everything and havent felt like i was missing much. never really got into contesting so N1MM always seemed like overkill for my use case. the WSJT-X integration with Log4OM was pretty painless to set up, theres a guide on the Log4OM site that walks through the UDP logging config and it just worked for me first try.

though i will say the Log4OM interface took some getting used to, theres a lot going on and i wasnt sure where half the settings were for the first couple weeks