Quick start and design overview · v1.3.0 previews (preview 8) · revised September 2026
Multi-Operator Teams Overview
Teams brings N1MM style Multi-Multi operation to every SKCC event with a multi-operator category: the WES, the weekday sprints, and the QSO Party. Everyone's QSOs merge into one shared team log over the internet, with team-wide dupe checking, a live teammates panel, and team chat, no VPN or network setup needed. First proposed in August 2026, it is now built and shipping in the v1.3.0 previews. This page gets you operating with a team in a few minutes, then explains the design underneath for anyone who wants the reasoning.
Quick start
Follow these steps in order the first time you open Teams. Everything here is explained in more depth further down the page.
- Open the Team window. From the main window menu, choose Sprint > Multi Operator. This is the only Teams entry point in the menu; every other Teams action (create, join, manage, chat, status) happens inside the Team window that opens.
- Create a team, or join one with a code. To start a new team, press Manage on the Team window's toolbar, then New Team, and enter a team name and the station callsign the team will sign on the air. Confirm the callsign when asked (Yes, Create Team); it cannot be changed later. The logger shows you a short join code such as
MMWES7to share with your teammates. To join an existing team instead, press Join on the toolbar and enter the code someone gave you. - Choose Multi-Op when the event starts. About 15 minutes before a sprint, the usual event participation prompt appears with Multi-Op as one of the choices (alongside Single Op and No, Not This Time), defaulting to Multi-Op when you belong to a team. Pick it and the team log opens on its own. Between sprints, the Team window offers Log QSOs for Brag until the next Sprint instead, so a team can practice or work Brag together any time.
- Operate. The Team window shows your teammates live: Operator, Name, SKCC number, Band, Freq, Status (Idle, Run, or S&P), QSOs, Rate/30, and Last QSO. Team chat sits below the roster; press the envelope button on a teammate's row to open a private direct-message tab. The Status icon on the toolbar cycles your own Idle/Run/S&P as you operate. On the main window, the status bar's Team QSOs / My QSOs button switches the log table between the whole team and just your own rows, and a separate View Team button raises the Team window (with a count when something new arrived).
- Leave or reconnect any time. Sprint > Leave Sprint steps you out of both the event and the team session, and your own log comes back. The Connect button on the Team window's toolbar turns green and reads Connected; pressing it disconnects, and pressing it again while disconnected reconnects and catches you up automatically, including QSOs logged while you were away.
- Submit once, from any member's copy. After the event, open Sprint > View Sprint Results with the team log open. It names the team station and fills in the multi-op field for you: Power Level: Multi Operator for the WES, Entry Category: Multi-Operator for the SKS, SKS-A, and SKS-E. Any one member submits; the log and totals are identical everywhere. The team log itself is an ordinary ADIF file in the Teams folder of your data directory (Manage > Open Teams Folder opens it directly), kept on every member's machine for good.
An event, start to finish
Before the eventForm the team, share the code
Teams are standing things, created any time ahead of the event. Open Sprint > Multi Operator (the only Teams item in the menu; it always opens the Team window), press Manage on the window's toolbar, then New Team, and enter a team name and the station callsign the team will put on the air, answered with a short join code like MMWES7. The station call is fixed for the life of the team (a team that wants to sign a different call is a new team, so the logger asks you to confirm the call before minting the code). The code goes out with an invite however you like: email, sked page, on the air; a copy button beside the code in the Manage dialog makes pasting it into a message quick. Invitees open Sprint > Multi Operator too, press Join on the toolbar, and enter the code. Next month the same team is simply there again: same name, same roster, same join code, no re-setup.
Event startOne new choice in a dialog you already see
The event participation prompt you already see gains a third button. It now offers Multi-Op, Single Op, or No, Not This Time, with Multi-Op as the default when you belong to a team. Choose Single Op and you are a solo participant exactly as today; nothing about solo operating changes. Connecting to your team while an event is already running joins it the same way, with no extra step.
Joining with the teamOne team log, on every machine
Choose Multi-Op and the logger opens the team log as your active log, remembering whichever log you had open. Every position logs into that same team log; every QSO carries the team's station call as the station and your personal call as the operator, and teammates' QSOs appear in your copy as they are made. Each machine holds a complete copy, identical everywhere, which is the N1MM crash-proofing Ted asked us to keep.
During the eventThe team at a glance
The Team window (Sprint > Multi Operator) shows a live roster for every member: Operator, Name, SKCC number, Band, Freq, Status (running or searching and pouncing), QSO count, rate over the last 30 minutes, and minutes since each operator's last QSO. Band, frequency, and status update within about 15 seconds of a change. A teammate whose logger is not connected shows Offline in the Status column, greyed out at their last-known band and frequency; a logger that loses its network without disconnecting, a laptop that sleeps or drops Wi-Fi, shows Offline within about two minutes. The Progress tab scores the team log the same way the main window scores a sprint, so every machine shows the same total. Dupe checking is team-wide and per band. Only the position that logged a QSO can edit or delete it. In the main log, the Operator column names who made each QSO; on the status bar, one button toggles the table between Team QSOs and My QSOs, and a separate View Team button raises the Team window (showing a count when something new arrived while it was closed).
Staying in touchChat and direct messages
Team chat for the razzing, plus direct messages to one teammate in their own tab (opened with the envelope button on that teammate's roster row), deliberately similar to the SKCC sked page so nobody has to learn a new way to needle the op whose rate died. One rule for both: before the event they are live-only, so a teammate who is not connected misses them (and a direct message to an offline teammate comes back "Not delivered"); during the event they are kept for the session, so a late or reconnecting teammate catches up. A teammate whose connection drops or returns gets a local note ("went offline" / "is back online") in your own chat view only; it is never shared with the rest of the team. The View Team button on the main window and a pulsing dot on the affected tab flag anything new; the Mute button on the Team window's toolbar silences the chime that comes with it. Messages travel to the relay over a secure connection but are not private and not end-to-end encrypted, so keep passwords out of them.
Leaving the eventLeave and rejoin at any time
Sprint > Leave Sprint steps you out of both the event and the team session in one action, or you can just press the green Connected button on the Team window's toolbar to disconnect; either way the log you had open before the event comes back, and new QSOs log under your own call. Reconnecting catches you up automatically. You can also switch to another log mid-event without leaving, to grab a special event station into your own log, say; the Team window reminds you the team log is not open, one click on Reopen Team Log brings it back, and everything the team logged while you were away is there. You stay on the team roster the whole time; if a position's computer dies mid-event, any teammate can press Remove on that seat in the Manage dialog so the operator can rejoin at once from a spare machine, and if nobody does that the seat frees itself five minutes after its connection dropped.
Your own goalsYour personal credit
While the team log is open, the Skimmer and the award highlights follow the team log, not your personal one. After the event, every QSO in the team log carries your call as operator, so you import your own QSOs into your master log filtered by operator call. Award credit under a team call follows the SKCC number you exchanged on the air, the same convention as K3Y and club calls.
After the eventOne submission, everyone keeps the log
One member of the team, any member, submits the Multi-Operator results: Sprint > View Sprint Results on the team log names the team station and leads the entries with Callsign and the sprint form's own multi-op field, filled in for you: Power Level: Multi Operator for the WES, Entry Category: Multi-Operator for the SKS, SKS-A, and SKS-E. The log and totals are identical on every machine, so there is no master station to depend on. The team log itself stays on disk in each member's Teams folder (Manage > Open Teams Folder opens it), an ordinary ADIF file any logging program can open, so October's log is still there in March.
What you confirmed
These were the design's assumptions in August; you confirmed them, and the build rests on them.
- Multi-Operator Teams runs on one shared call for all operators. The station call is set up when the team is created, and the operator is taken from the logger settings. There is no need to change the main logger's Station or Operator calls, as the Teams server handles this for you.
- A team may have any number of stations, locations, transmitters, and bands at once, split-site remote transmitting included; the logger only sees the station call, which the team chooses before the event.
- Operators can be on separate bands or the same band, with one running and one chasing multipliers and bonus stations.
- A new operator can join the team partway through an event; the roster is not fixed once the event starts.
- An operator can submit their own results for QSOs made with their own station call during the event, outside the multi-multi team.
N1MM+ networking compared
Your reference point is N1MM+ multi-computer networking, so here is plainly what Teams keeps from it, what it does differently, and what it leaves out on purpose. The N1MM+ descriptions come from its manual: its networking exists to log the same contest with the same station callsign, with the operator recorded per QSO via OPON; its Master station role covers telnet spot distribution and time sync; it has no member removal.
Kept on purposeWhat Teams takes from N1MM+
| Idea | N1MM+ | SKCC Logger Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Every computer holds the whole log | Replicated log across the network; a crashed PC loses nothing the others have | Same. Every position holds a complete, identical copy of the team log, and the copies rebuild from the positions themselves if the relay ever loses state. |
| One station call, operator per QSO | Same callsign on every PC, OPON sets the operator | Same model: the team's station call is the log's station, each QSO carries the operator's own call. |
| Everyone sees each other | Band, rate, and status per station in the network window | Band, frequency, Run or S&P, QSO count, 30-minute rate, and minutes since last QSO per member in the Team window. |
| Talking to each other | The gab window | Team chat plus direct messages, sked-page style. |
| No hierarchy for logging | Any station logs; the Master role is not about the log | Leaderless throughout: creation is an act, any member can remove a member or produce the submission. |
| Cross-position dupe checking | From the replicated log | From the team log, per band, on every machine. |
Done differentlyWhere Teams departs, and why
| Area | N1MM+ | SKCC Logger Teams | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting connected | Same LAN subnet, or a VPN such as Hamachi on every PC for split sites; matched versions; same contest and class on each; run as Administrator | Each logger dials a relay on the internet. Create a team, share a code, join. Nothing else to configure. | Ted's earlier eight-station Hamachi multi-multi had constant connect and drop pain; the relay removes that whole class of setup. |
| Split sites | A VPN problem | Invisible to the logger: any number of stations, locations, and transmitters may sign the call at once. | The logger only sees the station call. |
| Who is on the team | Whatever PCs are on the network | An explicit roster, standing from event to event; join by code, removal by any member. | Standing teams and a code-leak remedy need a roster; a network segment does not. |
| Scoring | KU8L's UDC files, which approximate SKCC events as far as UDCs allow | The logger's own exact SKCC scoring: SPC multipliers, C/T/S bonuses, bonus stations, WES themes, built in and always current. | Exact SKCC scoring is the point of the logger. |
| After the event | Combine the log from the Master, then hand-work into SKCC form | Any member submits from their own copy, with the team station and the form's own multi-op field (Power Level or Entry Category, depending on the sprint) filled in for them. | The log and totals are identical on every machine, so no station is special. |
| When the link drops | A dropped station is off the network until reconnected and resynced by hand | Logging, scoring, and dupe checking never pause; reconnect catches up on its own, including QSOs logged while offline. | Outages are a design input, not an exception. |
| Editing another position's QSO | Allowed by the network | Only the position that logged a QSO may edit or delete it while the event session lives. | Two positions correcting one record produce two logs. |
| Where the log lives between events | On the PCs | On the operators' machines only; the relay keeps nothing but the team itself. | The relay is a live wire, not a filing cabinet. |
| Spotting | Master passes telnet spots to the network | Each position runs its own Skimmer; nothing is passed. | The Skimmer already exists per position, and the crew does not use spot passing in SKCC events. |
Not copiedLeft out on purpose
- Transmit lockouts. Hardware's job; N1MM+'s own manual says not to trust the software version.
- Time sync. NTP exists on every operating system.
- Master-station spot passing and partner-mode call stacking. Contest-network plumbing the crew does not use in SKCC events.
- Band-ownership signaling (steering spots away from a teammate's band). The Team window's Band column already shows where everyone is; picking a different one is on you.
- A Master or any role. Teams has no leader, host, owner, or approval queue. N1MM+ is not the precedent for member removal either, since it has none; removal exists in Teams because a leaked join code needs a remedy.
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Chris WX7V