[na-user] NA observations

[Doug Brandon]

Here are some NA comments and suggestions I came up with after operating in 
the ARRL 10m contest.  I used version 10.44 beta.  A lot of my comments 
come from being a long time CT user who until now only used NA for sprints 
and NAQP.  Some of my "wishes" may already be implemented, so please 
enlighten me if this is the case.  Also, some of my problems may be related 
to using a beta copy.


I finally used NA in true SO2R one computer mode, and I have seen the 
light!  I feel like a dummy for ever having used a two computer 
network.  NA makes SO2R so easy, I could almost do it in my sleep.  I think 
it will definitely help my scores from now on.  Until now I had convinced 
myself that there must be a lot of weird complicated SO2R commands, so I 
avoided looking into it.  I was very wrong!


Is there a special CW character for inserting a "half space"?  Some calls 
sound a lot better when small delays are put in various places in the call 
like W6~E~EN.  I tried W6-EE+N a few times, but it didn't really have the 
desired effect.

When using ALT-D to dupe check on the second radio, it would be nice if you 
could put an asterisk or other special character in front of calls which 
are new multipliers (ie: "*P51BH waiting on 10CW").  Finding new QSOs on 
the second radio is great, but finding new mults is even better!

This problem or behavior happens while a CQ is going on radio 1 and I use 
ALT-D to dupe check on the second radio.  If I press ESCape to dismiss the 
ALT-D entry window while the CQ is still going, sometimes it closes the 
ALT-D window and the CQ continues, and sometimes it aborts the CQ and keeps 
the ALT-D entry window up.  I could not seem to find any distinct pattern 
or sequence of events that caused it to misbehave.

It would be nice if F5 remembered the call from the last QSO even if you 
have already pressed enter and are on a new QSO entry line.  Sometimes I 
press enter to log the QSO while the other guy is still sending stuff after 
the exchange (so I can call somebody on the second radio if the guy decides 
to send his call 3 times, hi).  If something happens and I want to have NA 
send his call again with F5, it doesn't work unless NA is "still on the 
current QSO".

I wish check partial recognized ? as a wildcard character like CT does.  If 
I catch the first part and last part of a call, but miss something in the 
middle, check partial is pretty useless.  In CT, I can enter "JA2?NN" and 
it shows me JA2BNN while NA shows nothing.  Same thing if you only catch 
the end of a call like 7X.  If I could enter ?7X, it would give me some 
possibilities to listen for next time, especially if the guy is weak.  This 
is VERY powerful!

In regards to ? in the callsign field, if I space to the exchange field, 
and then space back to the callsign field to fill in the call, when the 
cursor is over any ? character, it should overwrite the ? instead of 
inserting a new character.  Currently, it takes extra keystrokes to delete 
or backspace away the ?'s.

NA allowed me to log QSOs with nothing in the exchange field (I 
accidentally hit return prematurely a few times).  I would think there 
should at least be a warning or something.  It also does no error checking 
on the exchange field.  I can enter XYZ for an exchange, and it happily 
accepts it.  I first noticed this when I ecstatically worked AA1K as my 
first Delaware and last state.  I entered DEL (what he sent) and gulped 
when it didn't show as a mult.  I changed it to DE, and all was ok.  If the 
exchange data is all letters, maybe it should be checked against valid 
state abbreviations.  Otherwise, you would never know.

NA only tells me when a QSO is a new mult if I have the check mult window 
open.  It would be nice if it always checked the mult status for new QSOs 
and showed a message if it was a new mult.  This was most apparent when I 
had the bandmap open (which covers the check mult window) before sunrise 
while doing S&P.

I was a CW only entrant, and the QSO breakdown by continent in the .BRK 
file was not generated correctly.



I sure hope it doesn't sound like I'm bashing NA, I'm just offering some 
suggestions to make a great program even better.  I'm officially throwing 
away all of my other contest logging programs!

    73 de Doug, N6RT


/*-------------------------------------------------------------------*/
   Doug Brandon       http://members.home.com/dab         dab@home.com


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