so ive been using N1MM for probably 4 or 5 years now, mostly for contesting but also just general logging when im not doing anything structured. it works fine, dont get me wrong, but ive been hearing a lot of people talking up Log4OM lately and i started poking around the documentation and it looks like it does a lot more for everyday stuff - awards tracking, DXCC progress, that kind of thing which N1MM doesnt really care about since its contest-focused.

my actual question is whether its worth running two separate programs or if anyone has found a good workflow where they use Log4OM as their main log and then either export to N1MM for contests or just fire up N1MM separately and import back after. the duplicate handling sounds like it could be a nightmare. also im running WSJT-X on the side for FT8 stuff and i know Log4OM integrates with that but ive had issues before with UDP logging conflicts when multiple programs are trying to grab the same port.

not really a crisis situation just wondering what other people are actually doing day to day, not what the wikis say you should do

yeah the two-program thing is basically what i settled on after fighting with it for a while. N1MM stays in its own little world during contests and i just export an ADIF at the end and import into Log4OM. the duplicate checking in Log4OM is actually pretty decent if you set the matching fields correctly - callsign, band, mode and a time window. i use 30 seconds which catches almost everything without false positives.

the WSJT-X UDP thing is a bit fiddly though. what i do is point WSJT-X at Log4OM as primary and just accept that N1MM wont see those FT8 contacts in real time during the rare times im doing a contest and trying to run digital at the same time, which honestly isnt that often. if youre doing something like FD where you might be on FT8 in one op and SSB in another thats where it gets messy. havent fully solved that one if im being honest

I made the switch to Log4OM as my primary log about two years ago and don't regret it. The DXCC tracking alone was worth it for me since I was maintaining a separate spreadsheet before which was just silly. For contests I still open N1MM because nothing else really touches it for that use case, the bandmap integration and the rate meter and all that, Log4OM contest mode exists but its not the same animal.

One thing I'll mention - make sure you're on Log4OM 2 not the old version, the UDP handling is much better and the WSJT-X integration actually works reliably now. I had the port conflict issue you're describing on the old version and it basically went away when I upgraded. I think I have WSJT-X sending to port 2237 for Log4OM and thats it, no secondary logging to N1MM during FT8 sessions, I just do the ADIF import after.