I agree with Bill, but am not sure if I was clear enough. By Comm PTT I
meant the setting COMPTT to Yes in writelog, which is a CAT signal to
transmit or receive. By Serial I meant that I used a hardware
transistor/resistor interface directly on the serial port.
Mike raised a good question in a reply to me about where PTT is generated
during RTTY contesting using WL and MMTTY. At home I have everything on 2
ports, hooked to a Rigblaster Pro. The Rigblaster is configured for Serial
B goes to Comm1 on my computer and is configured for CAT. Com1 is set to
Rig Control yes, Com PTT to NO in Writelog. Rigblaster Serial Port A is set
to PTT/FSK/CW (Jumper 16), and goes to Com2 on the computer.
Now this is where it gets fishy and I worked with Fred WW4LL to get his
straight. The things that I noticed and thought I noticed were:
1. Since I have an Icom, I thought that Com PTT wouldn't work, but it does.
However since I have a rigblaster, im using regular Serial PTT, and PTT is
coming through the Mic jack.
2. I have to choose each time I start WL what kind of contest its going to
be. If it's a CW contest, then I have to make sure that the RTTY windows
don't open, because they'll take com2 for FSK and PTT, and I wont be allowed
to select Com2 as the CW port in WL. If its going to be a RTTY contest, I
have to make sure of the reverse. That if the CW port in WL is set to com2,
I have to select the last dot at the bottom of the screen underneath all of
the LPT ports in the CW column, else RTTY screens wont open correctly.
3. Serial PTT when working CW and (ports set to com2 in Setup/ports) comes
from the All Mode PTT on CW ports selection. (Remember that the Rigblaster
Pro has PTT/FSK/CW all on same port) The same rings true for SSB
contesting. However, Serial PTT does NOT come from All Mode PTT when a
MMTTY screen is open. There are two things that change when you open
RttyRite and MMTTY. One is where does FSK come from? That's the port
selected in the RTTYRite screen under Ports. Where does PTT come from?
That's controlled by the PTT selection in MMTTY. Learned? You can use CW
and PTT at the same time, as long as you don't have the Rtty screens open.
You can use the rtty screens as long as you disable the cw ports in WL's
setup/ports. If the rig is sharing ptt and cw, and you select the cw port
and the rig goes into transmit, before you freak out, make sure you've
selected the PC Generates box (it does NOT select this by default) for CW
generation, say ok, save the configuration and EXIT WL. Then get back it,
it'll key one time and you're good. The key is the PC Generates, the save,
and then the Exit.
With all of this in mind, I've not had a single problem using 2 ports for
all 3 modes on one rig and leaving the entire setup connected at all times.
Its just that you have to remember if you worked a cw contest, you cant open
the rtty windows, and if you have the rtty windows open, you cant change to
working a cw or ssb contest, and if you're changing the ports to cw, make
sure you don't forget the pc generates, and after you've changed it, save
it, exit and restart. PTT with RTTY windows (assuming you're using MMTTY)
comes from the mmtty ptt screen, ptt with all other modes comes from the all
mode ptt on cw port. You cant share ports and will get a port error. Once
you do that, all changes you make will NOT be recognized until you save it
and exit the program and restart. IE: You cant have cw port selected, open
the rtty screen, change the cw port, change the rtty port and expect it to
work. You'll have to change the CW port, save, exit and restart, then open
the rtty screen and fsk/ptt will work again.
Charlie
KI5XP
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 18:50:28 -0600
> From: "Bill Brooks" <ke5og@brooksdata.net>
> Subject: [WriteLog] Fw: Intermittent PTT Dropout
> To: <writelog@contesting.com>
> Message-ID: <001001c6157f$d9befc40$0100a8c0@NewChief>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> Mike,
>
> I had the same problem some time back and posted it here, but
> we never came
> up with a viable solution.
>
> Finally, I rebuilt my interfaces to include PTT and RTTY in the same
> interface so
> that MMTTY would do the PTT switching. I turned off COMM PTT
> in the Writelog
> Ports
> section. I have not had the problem since.
>
> I know how exasperating that problem is. Hope this hint helps.
>
> Bill
>
> Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2006 23:38:02 -0600
> From: "Charles Morrison" <cfmorris@bellsouth.net>
> Subject: Re: [WriteLog] Intermittent PTT Dropout
> To: <writelog@contesting.com>
> Cc: 'Mike' <k4gmh@arrl.net>
> Message-ID: <003801c615a8$06478fc0$1401fa0a@cfm2k>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Mike, what are you using to generate PTT? I had this problem
> with Comm PTT
> enabled in WL, but havent had it since with serial port PTT. For the
> contest rigs at the camp, I built the 3 separate function
> breakout box (at
> home I built just FSK into the shell) using a Radio Shack box
> and little
> piece of breadboard with both going to RCA jacks. Now I have
> PTT, CW and
> FSK on one serial port, and havent had the same PTT problem since.
>
> A lot of times I had a problem with PTT hanging because of RF
> interfering
> with the CAT signal to tell the rig to unkey. I just lived with the
> intermittent key/unkey and noticed that it went away when I
> changed both
> rigs to serial PTT.
>
> Charlie
> KI5XP
>
>
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