Versions

[Larry Tyree]

I will be releasing version 5.70 later today.  So far, for purposes of
the VHF contest, it is the same as 5.69, but that might change as the
day goes on (based upon input from my beta testers).

The goal of 5.70 is to have the VHF rovers totally up to snuff and
everthing cleaned up for the WRTC as well.  I will try to dust off
the list of suggestions people have sent me and implement some of them.

The current thinking for future enhancements include:

- Putting my SSB hat on and coming up with a good way to do two radio
  SSB.  This will probably require an external relay (a la K8CC) to
  switch things.  This mode might also be available for CW as well.

- Single keystroke mode for SSB where you don't need to fill in the 
  exchange (for IARU and CQ WW contest). Plus a way to update the zone
  of the previous QSO by just typing it in and hitting RETURN.

- Fixing some minor bugs in the packet operation.  These include the
  Control-B packet window sometimes not displaying new information,
  better support for split operation (in concert with the band map).

- Reverification of multi port operation.  It seems the network might 
  not be working as well as it could (or is it just RF related?).
  There will probably be some tools added to help keep an eye on
  the network's performance so if someone runs into a problem,
  it will be more obvious what is happening.

- Thinking about expanding the MASTER.DTA format to include initial
  exchange information (grid, section, state, province, check, name).
  This would expand the power of the program, remove limitations on
  the number of names the program can deal with and free up 95K of
  memory used by the name database.  That would give everyone a lot
  more breathing room under the 640K line.

There is a whole list of other minor things that I will sort through.  I 
will try to do that over the next week and publish my "to do" list for
the summer.  If something you think should be on the list is missing,
let me know.  

Part of my problem is I have about 4 different to do lists and need
to combine them.  

As you can tell, I am starting to think about TR again.  I spent
probably 200 hours improving the CALLTEST program which is used to
check the CQ WW logs.  There are a few other things that need to be
done with CALLTEST before the WRTC (it will be used there too), but
after that, my programming time will be dedicated to TR.

73 Tree N6TR
tree@contesting.com