TRLog notes (mainly from CQWW CW m/s operation)
Some of these are pretty MINOR things, and only suggested as ideas IF
there wasn't much work involved in implementing them.... Overall, things
worked well and the network handled the traffic fine.
1) using TR Slow doesn't seem to allow the LPT port to key the radio.
Going to the normal start, everything keyed fine.
2) would be nice if the packet spots listed the source of the
spot..instead of "Packet says...." insert the callsign in place of
"packet". Lots of spots came from people running stations and spotting
them, so other than indicating the band was open and/or activity from a
certain station these spots really aren't much good. Having the callsign
displayed might help a little - there were a few callsigns that seemed to
be doing a lot of this!
3) while on spots - can the sending of spots be turned off (via CTRL J
menu?), as some of our new Trlog users in the m/op hit the send spot
instead of the ESC key. This resulted in partial or busted calls being
spotted. Might be nice to turn that option off until everyone is
comfortable with the program.
4) need a "LOCK" feature on the S&P mode so you CAN'T get out of it
easily. Again, new TR users found it frustrating trying to keep track of
which they were actually in, and this results in a CQ message being sent
instead of your callsign!
5)Is it possible to save to floppy on all computers at the same time?
Something like the set time feature?
6)would be nice to see band map info for other bands WITHOUT actually
changing bands, so one can see other activity is around but still not
disturb your run.
7)on the subject of packet spots - can an option be made to show only
spots for the band AND mode you're on - in the ARRL 10m I was SSB only and
the screen was half full of CW spots that I didn't need.
8)Floppy save came up as successful even though the floppy was FULL.
9)In POST and the file merge feature, can it be expanded to merge
several/many files at once...this would save a lot of fooling around in a
m/s or m/m situation.
10) I know Tree is going to look at the m/op features in the next while
and probably has come up with better ways, but here's a few thoughts
(hastily made in the heat of CQWW CW)
We ran a 3 station m/s. Each computer was given two ids - one for running
and one for mult. At the end of the contest, each id was extracted from
that computers log, then all the MULT logs merged to get the final mult
log, and all the RUN logs merged to get the final run log. Then we can
check for 10 minute rule and NON-MULTs problems. If somebody forgot to
change ids, that caused problems after the contest. A RUN/MULT toggle
feature that was displayed at all times on the screen would have helped.
This could simply toggle between the 2 unique letters assigned under the
CTRL J menu - one for mult and one for running. While we're at it, those
letters aren't unique enough - I use Wordperfect after the fact to do
search and replace - make all the mult logs have an "M" after the QSO
number etc, but one can't search and replace a single letter followed by a
space....need to use some of the other characters available that aren't
going to show up elsewhere like !@#$%^&* etc etc.
11) Here's a biggie....add one more mode - RTTY. I really have to
struggle to get away from the TR method of logging (i.e. minimum
keystrokes, return key etc etc) when I run brand "W" in the RTY tests. The
other brand works fine and if you're used to CT/NA it isn't hard to use. I
don't know how much work it would be but it seems like much of the setup
is already there for the various buffers in the CW mode - just need to
translate that into RTTY. It's likely not that easy or it would have been
done.
12) Not a suggestion, just an observation from our CQWW CW m/op - the
biggest feature that was used, commented on and the like was that it was
so nice to be able to type in the corrected callsign in the exchange field
and the program knew what to do with it! This was also true in our ARRL
SS m/op, also with ops fairly new to TR operations. No tabbing between
fields etc - just GREAT!
Time to start getting things set up for our RAC WINTER CONTEST Dec
29th....not sure we're going to work 160 with people needing exchanges for
both our RAC event and the Stew Perry Challenge...
73 Don
VE6JY is Don Moman email: ve6jy@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
Box 127 Lamont, Alberta
T0B 2R0 (403) 895-2925
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