Status
Hi. I've been sitting on your to-do message and thinking about it off and
on. There's nothing wrong with anything you propose. Several items
wouldn't be on MY high-priority list, but, since you're inclined to spend
your time on them, I wouldn't feel right offering you any discouragement.
1> - Domestic .CTY type files (similar, if not exactly like CT)
3> - Packet spots passed around multi network
5> - Allow logging of RTTY contests
Sure. Number 3 is already done, right?
==========================
Two radio SSB improvements
From: "Bill Fisher, KM9P" <km9p@akorn.net>
Subject: TRLog & SSB
Cc: geoiii@bga.com
Status: OR
TRLog can do 2 radio SSB just like CW.
Program works the same as CW. When you hit the space bar to call someone on
the 2nd radio, the DVP is interrupted and the callsign memory is sent to the
2nd radio (by the DVP). The mic line is controlled through a relay that
TRLog controls.
You send the exchange with the DVP or manually. Sending manually on the 2nd
radio can be done easily with a foot switch interface. I have thought a lot
about this, and feel that a foot switch is the only practical way to control
audio going to the 2nd radio. It is also the only way to let Trlog know
that you have broken the normal CQing process. Typically I will leave CT in
the repeat mode (loop mode in TR) the entire contest. When I start the CQ
after a QSO, it's gonna repeat automatically. The CQ should start again
after each transmission on the 2nd radio. Just like on CW.
I know I do more 2nd radio stuff than anyone else in these DX contests.
It's the only reason I stay close. Put this functionality in the program,
and others will be more easily suited to do 2 radios on SSB. Right now it's
clunky using CT or TR or NA with one computer. You have to use 2 computers
and then devise some kind of lock out feature that isn't efficient.
It's kind of late notice, but I'de sure be willing to try anything you could
throw together for WPX SSB.
Thanks
I was thinking of some way to improve the two radio mode for ssb.
On cw the computer does the switching between the radios - all fine
and well - It seems that the easy way - short of trying to have
two dvp/w9xt cards etc - would be to provide info on the
printer port (if there is any room left) that would show what
rig was on - one pin and ground. That way the user could use
this information to switch the output of his voice keyer/mic line
and make it easy to do dualing cqs - and also give keyboard control
to the mic/dvk line. I would use it - I am still thinking of how
to do this - but that seems the easy way.
>From what I read - CT - provides some sort of info to do the
two radio stuff - might be worthwhile to check into what and where
the info is - might be usable as a "std". I dont think it is
always best to do what CT is doing - but some things like
key lines does make alot of sense.
==========================
Show dupe totals on the screen.
I too thought it would be nice if I knew how many dupes I have
in the qso total. Not a big deal - but it would be nice.
==========================
W5ASP stuff:
From: Jastaples@aol.com
Received: from emout14.mail.aol.com (emout14.mx.aol.com [198.81.11.40]) by paris.akorn.net (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA00581 for <tree@contesting.com>; Tue, 2 Jul 1996 21:26:31 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by emout14.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id VAA08979 for tree@contesting.com; Tue, 2 Jul 1996 21:27:29 -0400
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 21:27:29 -0400
Message-ID: <960702212728_568889345@emout14.mail.aol.com>
To: tree@contesting.com
Subject: TR Enhancements
Status: OR
Tree,
Just what you need... a couple of suggestions about enhancements to TR.
But seems as good time as any to pass along two that I've been wanting to
see,
1. You may recall my earlier suggestion about allowing TR to pick up the Beam
Heading data from the .CTY files that have been run through CTYHDG program. I
still think this is preferable to having to scrounge up the MP heading file.
Apparently the CTYHDG files are being kept current and available along with
the updated .CTY files you'e already using.
2. I like to use the simulator whenever I can. BUT my tower is located
"under" the operating table and has a "weak, squeaky" speaker that is just
barely audible. Any possibility you can add a feature to take advantage of a
sound card. Both PED and RUFZ now have this feature and it really helps.
OK... put these at the botom of the list and go on about getting ready for
WRTC. I don't know who will "win" but PLEASE, see to it that the T & T team
prevails over the previous "victors"... I had planned to be out there.. Rusty
has asked me to be a referee but couldn't manage it. Do well and have fun!
73, Joe, W5ASP
==========================
Setup RUN and MULT station IDs so that they can be moved between computers.
this must also flag the QSOs so that they can be seperated out at the end of the
contest - to support ARRL mult-2 and CQ WW multi-single
CQWW M/S. GeoIII commented on this. TR-Log is OK for M/M, but the
most popular multi-op category is M/S. This category needs at minimum
a way to designate stations as RUN or MULT. A real-time 10-minute QSY
timer and a post-contest 10-min rule checker are also needed. Further,
this applies to the M/2 categories of ARRL-DX and NAQP.
> [Geo/VZL] What about supporting arrl two transmiter / naqp two
> transmitter and CQ WW m/s? I was thinking about this and it seems
> that some way of making a networked computer mark the log entry as
> being a mult or run, xmiter1 or xmiter2 etc. Then just sorting the
> logs out after the event. How does TR mark the second radio qsos? can
> you tell what radio made them?
*** Without the RUN/MULT feature, an advisory to subscribers should
be posted warning them that TR-Log is unsuitable for M/S use in CQWW.
Otherwise, I'm worried that unsuspecting users will get caught. ***
Ken/WM2C and I tried using TR-Log from AG6D in NAQP's M/2 category.
I had to do a lot of post-contest hacking to separate the RUN1 Qs from
the RUN2 Qs and make sure they passed the 10-minute QSY rule. Here's
an excerpt from a message I sent last month:
> > [N6TR] This has resulted in no major problems with the few people
> > who have used it.
>
> [K2MM] Not true. I consider the stn-1/stn-2 problem serious. I was
> able to hack my way out of it in NAQP M/2, but others might not. This
> is the same situation you run across in CQWW M/S (really M/1.5) and
> ARRL M/2.
>
> CQWW M/S is a very popular category. You need to keep track of which
> Qs were made on the run station and which were made on the mult
> station. Or else you need some way to reconstruct this after the
> contest, perhaps just by assigning virtual run and mult status to the
> Qs according to a best-fit algorithm.
Somehow, I've got a feeling this run/mult stuff isn't easy.
That's all for now. See ya. ==========================John
==========================
Dualing CQs ==========================-
: 5. If you get into the Control-Dash dualing CQ mode, there really isn't
: any indication that you are in this mode on the screen. There should
: probably be a window reminding you that you are in that mode until you
: turn it off. Otherwise, your computer may be calling CQ and you aren't
: sure why and have no clue as to how to make it stop.
==========================
Auto CQ mode
what about a way to toggle in and out of this auto-cq mode.
it was a pain to have to hit so many keys to get back in the
auto-cq mode after making a contact. this will be a heavily
used feature in the 10m test!
==========================
Correcting callsigns
> 5) Correcting prefixes of calls with 1 letter suffixes should send the whole
> call. If I first send KQ0U and then correct it to KO0U, the program should
> say KO0U OK 73 VK8TM, rather than say KO0 OK 73 VK8TM.
How about all four letter calls??
==========================
Duping problems
: 2. There seems to be something irregular in how the program treats portable
: stations. KV6O/5 never came up "black" in the possible calls window,
: even after I had worked him, and even though the program confirmed him as
: a dupe when I checked. I had wildcard partials set to true. Several
: other portables had similar manifestations ========================== neither the full call nor
: the partial produced a blacked-out call-sign, though the call was in the
: possibles window.
:
: RESPONSE: I will work this and see if I can reproduce the problem.
i worked two dupes because the program treats n6tr and n6tr/7
as two diffrent people. Not a big deal to me - for the most
part - I recall there being a big noise about it a few years
ago with the CT program - I am not sure this is easy to fix/change.
In some ways it is useful.
==========================
Hi Tree!
When you mentioned the possibility to control BAND UP etc with F11 and
F12 I remebered a short email-discussion we had allmost a year ago.
I suggested that one could program the F-keys with commands to the
RADIO. Have you thought any about this. I'm using Kenwood radio and I
think that brand is easier than ICOM to do this with.
My suggestion was
put in an escape sequence (is it ctrl-C now?) and then put in some ascii
to be put out on a serial-port. For an example:
<ctrl-C> radio_one: A14025000;
special esc what radio? message to be sent
The reason I'm asking you about this is that some control of the radio
would be rather nice to have on the PC instead of reaching for a knob on
the radio. One example is filter switching, which is rather awkward on
my TS450 (you have to push the filter button several times to cycle
between wide and narrow filters).
Anyway I'm really enjoying your program. Im planning to put up some
special installation in the M/S in the upcomming SAC. Perhaps using the
TWO RADIO mode to enable multiplier chasing with another rig.
73 de Ingo / SM0AJV
email: if@cec.comm.se
==========================
> 2. (Not tried with 5.76) The RATE report in POST only reports hourly rate
> breakdowns for twenty four hours. It should ( :-) ) report for the entire
> log.
==========================
> 3. I was unable to get callsign update enable to accept the following (in
> WAE).
>
> ea5mo/3<enter>
> ea5om/3 1<enter>
>
> I had to go to the callsign entry window to do the correction. (QSL mode
> was
> STANDARD). The second <enter> doesn't do anything.
I will look into that.
==========================
> 1. Add the prosign BK to CW messages. I actually wanted this one in
> general
> QSO mode. I promise never to use it during a contest. :-)
Maybe. I actually find that sending BK is more like how people typically
send it.
==========================
2. I need a way to get the number of the last QTC sent. After the QTC was
> sent
> and acknowledged, a european who shall remain nameless asked me for the
> number. I couldn't find it. Looking in the QTC files is ugly.
==========================
> 4. Correcting a callsign in the editable window does NOT update the
> dupesheet.
> We've discussed this one before, but I really would like to see the
> dupesheet
> update when editing the last 5 qso's.
==========================
Then - thanks for the latest upgrade of TR (5.75). I have been playing
> a little with it during spare time at work. The beginning zeros works
> fine (1, 2 or 3). But in SAC there was some strange things about the
> prefixes. When the QSO:s are in the LOG.TMP the different prefixes are
> counted as a mult (SM3, SL3, SI3, 7S3, 8S3 and so on) but then when
> they are dissapearing from the screen and saved into LOG.DAT the wrong
> mults are removed and the final points are reduced. So in the end when
> the contest is over I think it's OK, but it sure looks strange when
> you are running the contest. Maybe a "beauty" bug.
==========================
> The other thing I noticed was the QSO and MULT windows. The QSO window
> shows both CW and SSB, but as I see it it should only show either CW
> or SSB depending what mode you are running. SAC is not a mixed mode
> contest - it's two different contests - one on CW and one on SSB. Then
> the MULT window doesn't show anything - it's empty. I beleive the
> intent is to show what other bands you need that Scandinavian prefix
> on. I used the call EA8CN when I tried it.
I think I can fix that by changing QSO BY MODE = FALSE in the default for
the SAC contest. I will see what is happening with the prefix mutliplier
info. That is probably related to the big in the first paragraph.
==========================
> The other thing I noticed was the QSO and MULT windows. The QSO window
> shows both CW and SSB, but as I see it it should only show either CW
> or SSB depending what mode you are running. SAC is not a mixed mode
> contest - it's two different contests - one on CW and one on SSB. Then
> the MULT window doesn't show anything - it's empty. I beleive the
> intent is to show what other bands you need that Scandinavian prefix
> on. I used the call EA8CN when I tried it.
I think I can fix that by changing QSO BY MODE = FALSE in the default for
the SAC contest. I will see what is happening with the prefix mutliplier
info. That is probably related to the big in the first paragraph.
==========================
TR does not quite score the contest correctly. Apart from 5 points for
a non-IOTA, and 15 for an IOTA, you score 2 points for EITHER your own
DXCC OR your own IOTA. The own IOTA/DXCC has some significance in G
land! All of the British Isles mainland (=G GW and GM) is iota EU005.
(One reason we go to an offshore GW island, all the Gs are 15
pointers!). I guess it would need an extra question in the opening
screen ("Are u an IOTA station? Enter ur IOTA or blank for non-IOTA")
2
It would be useful to have a validation check of the IOTA reference, if
one is entered. (Not a 100% check against the IOTA database which would
be nice to stop incorrect islands being logged ie where the iota logged
does not belong to the callsign logged)
An IOTA reference has a fixed format of 2 letters followed by 3 numbers
with no spaces or hyphen (EU005, EU124 etc). However it is possible to
log EU05, EU5 or even EUU05! and get a mult for each one. We did all of
these! A validation check of some kind would be nice.
==========================
3
Finally I had some problems getting INITIAL.EX to work. I typed up a
list of "advertised" iota contest stations in the "<call> <iota>"
format. Called it "initial.ex" Sometimes it seemed to work. Not when
I tested it with a dummy contest beforehand, but during the contest (we
rebooted a few times, RF problems mainly) at times it appeared to work.
During post-contest analysis I noticed that during the initial boot up
there is some type in yellow that gives progress during loading which
said "initial.ex" found and loaded (? something like that!). My
suggestion is that an optional pause is available at that point to allow
the text to be read to see what is going on for debugging. This could
then be switched off once all is well for the contest proper. I am very
interested in INITIAL.EX for the domestic 160 metre contests we have
over here (I will send u another email about the scoring of these!).
==========================
CQP
>From k2mm@MasPar.COM Thu Sep 29 12:54:56 1994
To: tree@cmicro.com
Subject: Re: CQP
> > Also does TR Log count the county lines correctly ??
>
> This is a hard thing.
Yeah. Crazy contest. Hope I don't work anybody sitting on a State line!
It occurred to me that one way of handling this would be to allow dupes to
count as new mults ========================== configurable, of course.
This might not be ideal for CQP because the exchange includes QSO#.
But something like this might be needed for VHF contests: When a rover
changes grid squares, you can work him again for both QSO and MULT credit.
I'm pretty sure this is the case in the June and Sept contests; not sure
about January.
NEW MULT DUPE = DUPE
NEW MULT DUPE = MULT
NEW MULT DUPE = QSO AND MULT
Maybe this makes sense. Maybe it's just a hallucination.
==========================
M/M serial numbers.
> Another question with this is how should we set up the MULTI-network if
> we wanted to enter the M/M class. In that class one should use separate
> serial numbers on each band? This was not possible in the set up
> described above.
I thought I had a way to do that, but I don't see it. Perhaps I just
thought about doing it, but didn't! I will think about doing that
again.
==========================
N6AA stuff (old - fixed??)
I have some notes about the program which I hope I remember enough about to
comment intelligently.
1) Work SU2MT, he gives you 5534. Hit <space> 55 in the exchange window,
and then <enter>. It gives the guy a 34 report and puts him in zone 55. The
program should be smart enough to figure out that the 55 is the report in
the CQ contest.
2) Work a dupe, the QSO total goes up.
3) Sending messages between bands==========================
Two of you are typing in messages at roughly the same time. The last one to
hit <enter> gets his message displayed. The other message gets displayed for
a microsecond, and then overwritten.
It would be better if the display line put a colon at the end of the first
message and then added the second message on the same line.
This happens more often than you would think. Someone will ask if someone is
around that can help with something and both of the others will answer.
4) Improvement department: It would be good if the frequencies of the other
bands could be permanently displayed. You could define a header like
<band>freq
If you typed: 20freq 14,175
the program could recognize it as the 20 meter frequency.
Similarly, 15freq 21,223 or 15freq 21223
would be the 15 meter frequency.
The receiving computers would recognize it, and put the frequency into a
little window that would only change when one of the update messages came
in.
Actually, the background of the message area could be used. Then the line
would read:
1800 3500 R 7000 T 7000 14245 21321 28433
or something when there were no messages. Note that on 40 there might be
separate transmit and receive frequencies. You could send 40freq r7213
t7075. You could initialize the frequencies at 3500 etc when there has been
no input. If the program ever gets so sophisticated that it reads the
frequency from the transceiver, it could automatically send these updates
now and then.
5) It doesn't say dupe when you hit enter after entering a call, but the
cursor goes down (Had workdupe or whatever it's called enabled. It should
still say (dupe) as it goes down to the exchange line.
It also doesn't put the zone in automatically, when you have worked a dupe.
6) I can't remember the exact circumstances, but the computer would die with
a RTE 201 message after you did something like QSO/QSL? Someone else, like
Phil, found it independently also and we just avoided doing it.
7) In the CQ contest, it would be nice to have another line in the score box
with points on each of the bands.
8) Somehow only the needed multipliers in North America were showing up on
the screen.
9) The message "DVP off" was always up even though there were no DVPs in
use.
10) In viewing the entire log, if you do control-end to get to the end and
then pageups to go back from there, it stops going back after a little
while.
11) When you are interlinked with the other bands, the QSO totals are
different. The band you are operating counts dupes in the total, but does
not count dupes from other bands. Therefore each total contains the dupes
from that band, and all the bands have different totals.
1000) Big time comment. No immediate action expected, but you might think
about this for the future.
The concept of multiple subdirectories and multiple logcfg files and many
files called LOG.DAT, is too complicated.
It is very hard to get someone who is not pretty computer literate to even
think about.
It would be nice if it just came up in a QSO mode all the time. Then all
contacts would normally be made using QSO mode. If you wanted to operate a
contest you could enter something like CONTEST CQ WW .
It would use a new LOGCFG.DAT file until you said CONTEST QSO or something.
The main log could just add the contacts inside it. It could make a separate
contest log calling it LOG243.DAT and LOG244.DAT etc. It could update a
dictionary of the LOGXXX.DAT files.
LOG001.DAT 941027 941028 CQ WW
LOG002.DAT 941103 941104 SWEEPSTAKES
LOG003.DAT 941119 941120 SWEEPSTAKES
LOG004.DAT 941126 941127 CQ WW
etc.
I don't expect you to jump at this idea, but something like it would really
be slick.
I see that in the case of N6TR/7,LOG003.DAT would be 1.5 operator multi-op.
73,
Dick N6AA
==========================
> 3) In F-10 (send CW with keyboard), the F keys don't work to send the CW
> messages. They should. There is nothing else they should do. It is also
> desirable to send something and then hit F-4 to send 73 de VK8TM.
>
I have opened up the code two or three times to add this, and it got
too complicated... maybe someday.
> 9) In F-10 (send CW) the backslash key should send TU.
Actually, that is easier than the function keys.
==========================
> 14) Several times I wanted a quick <kill the automatic start sending after 4
> characters feature>. SM1CNS/DU7 just called and I wanted to enter his call
> before I forgot it or something. Maybe something like SM1<control-C> NS/DU7
> would work. Then I could hit <enter> afterwards and it would start sending
> his call. Maybe this is too hard.
>
An interesting idea to think about.
==========================
> 16) In POST, multiplier check it was asking me if I would change all /MM to
> GM multiplier. I would say NO.
I need to disable country generation when the call has /MM in it. This
was added to my todo list a couple of days ago and will be in the next
release.
==========================
2) I assume you haven't made any of the page length changes to POST
POST, so that I can finally print my log and a send it to
COx?
--
George Fremin III
Austin, Texas C.K.U.
The operator formerly known as WB5VZL
512/416-7010
geoiii@bga.com