Alan, Thanks reporting these things.
On (1) there IS a way to stop the Tune signal, although its not as
convenient as you request. The Abort button (which isalsomapped to ESC
on the keyboard) stops the Tune signal, as well as all automation.
On (2) I don't know a better answer than embedding your QSO party
multiplier name in a CQ message. The 77-bit packing scheme has a limited
number of ways you can put together a message string and you found one:
a CQ can have a second "word" of up to four "letters" and "MAU" fits
that description. It stretches the traditional definition of the CQ
message (the added word after the CQ is traditionally a directed "TO"
rather than a "FROM") but the FT8 format is so restricted that you have
to make some stuff up. It seems 199 others got understood your point. (I
didn't look up the definition to confirm, but I am pretty sure the four
characters are limited to the 26 letters of the english alphabet--no
digits or other characters are allowed.) Another possibility is almost
any 13 "characters" are allowed as "free text." "Character" is defined
as digit, space, alphabet...and maybe nothing else.
On (3) I was puzzled why WL would omit the received RST signal, even
after I simulated an HI QSO Party operation and confirmed what you
report. The problem turned out to be that your guess was exactly
correct. RTTY-enabled contest modules (e.g. the HI QP module) reject
impossible received RTTY RSTs. I can and will update DigiRite to tell
WriteLog to override that validity check (as in "I am FT4 and am NOT
RTTY, thank you very much!"), and that fix will be in the next DigiRite
update.
Getting the received QTH logged is, in general, not a solved problem in
FT8/FT4 for QSO parties. I was assuming until I got to this comment of
yours that you had set DigiRite's File/Setup/Exchange setting to "Grid
Square & dB report". Now I am not so sure as there are variations in
that setting that are more-or-less consistent with your report.I have
seen at least one state QSO party organizer notice how to press the
Field Day exchange into service. The state must have fewer multipliers
than there are Field Day classes (1A to 32A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E --the 77 bit
format is quite specific, there are definitely 1A through 32A, but I
would have to read the code to see how many B's and C's and D's are
supported.) The organizers published the mapping of which Field Day
class corresponds to which state multiplier, and everyone out of state
sends an ARRL Section or DX.
Those settings are not something invented for DigiRite. They are the set
of FT8/FT4 exchange messages that can be packed into its 77 bit fixed
length format. In the "Grid square &dB report" mode, DigiRite only
knows/logs the received QTH as a grid square. In its Field Day and Round
Up modes, its expecting exchange messages that have an ARRL section (For
Field Day) or a State/Province (for Round Up), along with a traditional
RST. But it does the operator in HI no good to switch to a mode when the
guys on the other end are operating with Grid Squares and dB
reports--that's all you'll ever receive on your end.
Wayne
> I used Digirite this weekend for the Hawaii QSO Party. It seemed to work
> quite well out of the box although I had my usual Winderz sound card issues
> to start with.
>
> A couple of thoughts:
>
> 1) The TUNE function is great, but it could be better if it toggles on/off
> with the mouse instead of the 3 seconds. Often I would click it and want to
> truncate it quickly by clicking again. Just want verification that power is
> going out and SWR is low. That takes less than a second but once started
> there's no way to stop it except to wait.
>
> 2) For our QSO Party .. using HQP in state module .. i need to be able to
> send my mult name (MAU) somehow but I don't know any tricks to do that for
> each QSO. I could send a CQ as
> CQ MAU KH6TU BL10
> But I wasn't sending CQ very often. I tried some edited variations but
> they all seemed to either go out as "bad message" or <....> which I have no
> idea what that means. I presume this is a limitation of FT itself and there
> may be no solution to this problem. If there is, please let me know.
>
> 3) WL inhaled each QSO correctly except that it did not log the received
> S/N although it did log the sent S/N. I presume that's a module issue and
> it was looking for the usual 599? Also no recieved QTH was logged even for
> DX stations which should be logged as "DX". It was not difficult for me to
> manually edit the QSOs as they happened. Even FT4 isn't that fast. Plenty
> of time to twiddle my thumbs.
>
> I made 199 QSOs this weekend with FT4 or FT8 and I never used FT-anything
> before.
>
> 73, Alan AD6E / KH6TU
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