I was seeing the WRTC final results here
http://wrtc2018.de/index.php/en/competition/final-scores
I noticed that just one team (Y87O: N2NL, W2SC -11th place) used
writelog and this dissapointed me.
The most of the teams used wintest. I have used wintest myself while I
was in EP6T. My opinion was that it was very good on SSB and CW and very
bad on RTTY. It was really good with networked computers when writelog
had problems but now writelog works without problems in network. Maybe I
have used 2-3 times more after then. So my knowledge is about the basics
and not in every detail. So I searched the wintest manual to see what
are the differences between 2 programs and finally what was this that
drove the most of the teams to use wintest and not writelog...
I found these (reading the manual and based in my experience with
writelog - maybe writelog has some of the features and I don't know or I
have not understand so well wintest features). I hope my email would be
useful to improve writelog and make this better and more teams use in
the next wrtc. I separated the differences in 2 paragraphs: critical and
good to have.
Good to have
1. Wintest needs just a few computer resources, a PIII is enough!
2. Price: no money for updates, only for major ones.
3. A feature called "Intelligent quick qsl" where wintest takes care to
send my call every x minutes to comply with the rules while it sends
just tu the other time.
4. Easy to switch keyboards (French – English). It was very useful in EP
or in dxpeditions.
5.Band map shows calls as a list or according frequency. The list is
similar with the packet spots window in writelog but in wintest you can
change between the frequency list to calls list easily and seems more
practical.
6.Support of languages of the user interface.
Critical
1. CW operation especially “live” cw (the computer starts to send cw
while I continue to type) is much better in wintest. It continues to
copy the letters until the last millisecond. Even speed bursts works
better in wintest with more "clear" cw.
2. Less time to save a file. Really you don't need to save the file at all.
3. Propagation forecast integrated with hamcap plus solar activity window
4. Callsign check: On the fly callsign pattern check. A message appears
below entry window about the validity of the call based on the K1TTT
callsign.pat file
5. Check log on the fly (check for 10min violations, search for possible
bad exchanges, etc)
6. Partner window. Your partner can listen your pileup and add calls
from his computer and you have them in a list
7. World map with live updated Grey Line window
8.Setting up scenarios for SO2R and advanced operating. As I have not
used wintest and just read the manual, I am not sure how useful is this
or if really needed.
Off course writelog has some very useful features that wintest or other
programs don't have but this is not the point in my email. Also I
noticed that there were 10 yaesu ft1000 between the 126 radios, about
8%. Even K3 were more than 50%, this is enough percentage for writelog
to support the 2nd vfo in ft1000 series radio.
--
...73 de Kostas SV1DPI
(One of SZ1A-EP6T)
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