On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 09:55:10AM -0500, Richard DiDonna NN3W wrote:
> I just downloaded this program, and I agree with Tom,
> its awesome.
>
> Very, very good trainer. Comes with static, stupid
> operators, folks that try to take your freq over, and
> everything else you would expect.
It's certainly a nice piece of software, but as a long-time PED-user,
there are a few things which are a bit annoying:
* When working at high speeds, I am used to press <insert> to send the
station's rprt + number *while* entering the callsign, usually after
the suffix. This is because nobody can type as fast as the callsign
itself is sent, so you gain half a second or so when typing:
Listen: VE3NEA
Type: VE3<ins>NEA
Send: VE3NEA 5nn 123
instead of:
Listen: VE3NEA
Type: VE3NEA <ins>
Send: VE3NEA 5nn 123
and that's not possible in MorseRunner because after pressing <ins>
the callsign to be sent cannot be changed anymore (unlike in PED for
example).
* It's a bit annoying that directly after hitting <enter> to log the
QSO you get the information if you logged it wrong, especially when a
"LID" sends a report like "5nn 123 e e 122" and you pressed <enter>
after the first number. This has little to do with real contesting,
where one could easily correct it after the repetition, even though
logging the QSO.
The approach taken by PED is better in my opinion: you can change
anything in the log as long as the session is running, *after* the
session is complete you'll get your mistakes displayed.
* The Competition-Mode is a nice feature, but success is largely
dependend on the length of your callsign. Of course that's just like
it is in a real contest but makes the scores on the highscore-list
less comparable. For example I worked one try with a faked 3-letter
call and made over 190 QSOs, with my own (long) call only about 175
QSOs were possible (so far). There should be a standard-call to be
used by anyone, or some other way to prevent this
advantage/disadvantage for thise with short/long callsigns.
* Another problem of the competiton-mode is that the parameters of
"Activity" and "Bandwidth" are not fixed; it took quite some time to
find good parameters for me and probably they're still far away from
the optimum. In my opinion the competition mode should have totally
fixed settings (except for CW pitch and speed) to make scores
comparable. Well, lastly the length of the competition is pretty long;
I rarely have 1h to spend on MorseRunner during weekdays..
In spite of all this: It's a _great_ piece of software and, most
importantly for many: it runs on Windows XP and 2000, which PED does
not (without using VDRM or DOSbox).
CC to VE3NEA, I don't know if he is reading on this reflector.
73, Fabian DJ1YFK
PS: Lurking a lot on cq-contest, I notice a *lot* of top-posting here.
Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting :-)
--
Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK * http://fkurz.net/
rediscover the web: http://getfirefox.com/
BCC PED Contest: http://www.bavarian-contest-club.de/contest/ped/ped_eng.html
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