CW Skimmer

CW Skimmer is a panoramic multi-channel CW decoder that lets you decode and analyze data in a user-friendly environment.

Setting up this application doesn't take a long time, nor special attention, thanks to the fact that it contains only familiar options.

By judging the appearance of its interface, it's clear that CW Skimmer is outdated. However, the main app window is pretty simple to navigate.

You can easily start and stop the radio with one click, play the recording, enable or disable the audio output, noise blanker, anti-click and relative frequency scale, filter labels, examine a list with all call signs, bring up the band scope, view and edit a watch list, as well as configure waterfall and frequency calibration settings.

It's possible to modify the default hardware type, sample rate and soundcard driver, adjust the volume level, pick the channel mode, disable Windows animation, choose a band plan, ask the app to decode only in the CW segments, tweak the maximum number of CW decoders, as well as activate a Telnet server.

We haven't encountered any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that CW Skimmer didn't freeze, crash or display error dialogs. It had minimal impact on the machine's performance, using low CPU and RAM.

On the other hand, it hasn't been updated for a pretty long time, and it needs a lot of improvements. Nevertheless, you can test it for yourself to make that call.