[SD-User] WPX comments

[Brian Summers]

Hi Paul:

I spent several hours in the contest and have the following observations/comments using V14.03 and Winkey.

1. 'Beep' for a dupe. When S&P'ing I'm looking at the radio to see where I am in terms of frequency whilst tuning the band. If I hear someone CQ'ing I then take my eyes off the radio and enter the call via the keyboard. ('Cause I'm not a touch typist!). To see if it's a dupe I then have to take my eyes of the keyboard and look at the monitor. And then back to the keyboard. Is there anyway the software can cause a beep to let me know it's a dupe?

2. Whilst cq'ing there were a few occasions ( not many really) when the machine would not stop sending, necessitating the Esc key to stop.

3. There is a delay when using the function keys. As an example, I've responded to someone who is CQ'ing. He gives me a RST S/N which I enter and my machine immediately sends him an RST S/N. If he asks for a repeat and I use F6 or F7 there's a one second or so delay before the machine responds. A similar thing happens in Run mode. Most disconcerting!

4. There were numerous occasions when I would lose the link to my radio and the radio display would momentarily flash. There doesn't seem to be any way I can repeat at will so I can only describe the effect. I'd be tuning across the band in S&P mode and would notice on the monitor that where 'My Call' is shown it was no longer there, and just below  was 599 with an underscore below the first 9. There would no frequency shown. Changing band on the radio didn't correct it and the only way to recover seemed to be by the minus key. Sometimes whilst tuning I would notice the frequency readout on my radio momentarily blank and then I'd see the effect described. But I can't say for sure there was a flash on my radio display every time the link was lost. In Run mode I'm primarily on one freq of course, but there would be times I'd be tuning the band looking for a clear frequency but the link loss did not occur even once. Changing linktimes and polltimes from min to max and in between had no effect.

This was my third contest with SD and I'm still learning of course. Hope you can help me with the above, Paul.

73, Brian VE7JKZ