so ive been using Log4OM for about two years now for everyday logging and i genuinely like it, the interface makes sense to me and the QSL manager stuff is decent. but every time contest season rolls around i feel like im fighting it a little bit. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just switch to N1MM for contests and keep Log4OM for day to day stuff but that means running two separate logs and then trying to merge stuff later which sounds like a nightmare honestly.

the other wrinkle is i run WSJT-X pretty regularly for FT8 and FT4, and right now i have that piped into Log4OM via the UDP stuff which mostly works but i've had it drop spots a few times and i cant always tell if its a WSJT-X thing or Log4OM thing. i tried exporting an ADIF and importing into N1MM once and it was kind of a mess, dupes everywhere and the timestamps were off for some reason.

anyone actually running N1MM as their primary contest logger and then using something else for the rest of the time, and how do you handle keeping it all straight? or am i overthinking this and should just commit to one thing

yeah this is kind of the eternal question isn't it. i went through the same thing a couple years back. what i ended up doing was just accepting that N1MM is basically the contest logger and i use it only for that. my everyday logging is in Log4OM and i keep them separate on purpose, like i dont even try to merge them anymore. at the end of a contest i just export the Cabrillo for submission and then separately export an ADIF if i want those QSOs in my main log, but honestly half the time i dont even bother because contest QSOs are kind of their own thing anyway.

the WSJT-X UDP issue you're describing, i had something similar and it turned out i had two programs trying to listen on the same port at the same time which was causing it to drop packets randomly. worth checking your port config if you havent already, make sure nothing else is binding to 2237.

i just use N1MM for everything including FT8 contests like FT8RN and stuff, it handles WSJT-X integration fine once you get the network message setup right. never really got into Log4OM tbh, tried it once and felt like it was doing too much if that makes sense. for regular dx logging outside of contests i just use the N1MM log and call it a day, less moving parts.