so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for maybe two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the interface is clean and it syncs with LOTW and clublog without much fuss. but every time contest season rolls around i end up switching back to N1MM and it feels like im living a double life with my logbook. dupes everywhere, had to manually merge logs twice last year and the second time i definitely lost a few contacts somewhere in the process.

the thing thats really bugging me now is WSJT-X. i have it talking to Log4OM just fine via UDP and that works great for FT8 on a normal weekend. but when i tried to run a contest last month — it was the ARRL DX CW actually — i had N1MM open at the same time and i think both programs were trying to grab the UDP packets from WSJT-X and it turned into a mess. not sure if i had the ports wrong or what but half my FT8 contacts just didnt show up anywhere.

is there a clean way to run these together or do most people just pick one and commit to it for the whole operating event? feels like theres probably a smarter way to do this that im not seeing.

yeah the UDP thing will absolutely bite you if both programs are listening on the same port, WSJT-X only broadcasts to one destination at a time by default. what some people do is run something like JTAlert in the middle which can rebroadcast to multiple apps but honestly for a serious contest i just close Log4OM completely and let N1MM handle everything. you can import the ADIF back into Log4OM after the contest is over and it merges pretty cleanly as long as you dont have overlapping contacts from other modes that weekend.

the other thing worth knowing is N1MM has gotten a lot better with FT8 support through the contest modules, its not perfect but for something like ARRL DX where youre mixing CW and digital it handles the dupe checking way better than trying to keep two logs in sync live. i tried the two-program thing for about one contest and never again.

cant speak to Log4OM much since i went all in on N1MM years ago and never looked back for anything contest related, but the WSJT-X port conflict thing is a known headache. pretty sure you can set a secondary UDP address in the WSJT-X settings under reporting, so you could theoretically have it send to two IPs or ports but i havent personally tested that setup. theres a thread on the N1MM reflector about it from like 2022 that went into a lot of detail if you can find it in the archives.