so ive been using N1MM for a while now mostly because thats what everyone told me to use when i got into contesting and it works fine for that, no complaints there. but for day to day logging its kind of a pain, like its not really built for just casually logging a few QSOs on a weekend afternoon without setting up a whole contest profile or whatever.

started messing around with Log4OM a few months back and honestly its way nicer for general use, the interface doesnt make me feel like im launching a space shuttle every time i want to log a contact. the logbook features and the QSL management stuff is actually useful. but then contest weekend rolls around and im back to N1MM anyway because nothing really touches it for that.

now the thing thats been bugging me lately is WSJT-X. i have it set up to log to Log4OM via UDP and that mostly works but i had a weird thing happen last weekend where some FT8 contacts werent showing up and i couldnt figure out if it was a UDP port conflict or Log4OM just decided to stop listening or what. anyone dealt with this? also curious if anyone just gave up and went full N1MM for everything including FT8 and just lives with the clunky daily logging

yeah the WSJT-X UDP logging thing is flakey sometimes, ive seen it drop contacts before and never fully figured out why. one thing that helped me was making sure only one program was listening on port 2237 at a time because i had a situation where i had N1MM open in the background from a contest the day before and it was apparently still grabbing the UDP packets before Log4OM could see them. closed N1MM completely and the missing logs stopped. might not be your issue but worth checking whats actually bound to that port.

as for the two-program workflow i basically do the same thing you do. Log4OM for everything normal, N1MM the second a contest starts. its a bit annoying to keep them in sync but i just export an ADIF from Log4OM before a contest and import into N1MM so i have the dupe checking working right. not perfect but it works well enough that i havent bothered finding a better way

Honestly I tried to make Log4OM my everything app for about six months and I liked it but the contest module never clicked for me the way N1MM does. the rate display in N1MM during a serious contest run is just something else, you can see your hour rate and the multiplier status at a glance without thinking about it and after a while your brain just gets wired to that layout.

The FT8 to N1MM pipe actually works pretty solid in my experience if you configure the WSJT-X settings correctly, make sure the secondary UDP server address is pointed right and N1MM is set to accept it. I run FT8 QSOs straight into N1MM during contests like FT8 roundup and it rarely misses anything. for regular digital work outside contests though I get why you wouldnt want N1MM open just to log a few JT contacts on a tuesday night