[Trlog] Vista, USB ports, TR4W, microHAM

[ke5c at hot.rr.com]

I assume that was K5PI at V31TP who said hello two or three times.  I'm sure you guys had a blast.  I've been out of the loop for a while, but decided to get on for part of this weekend, and I sure am glad I did - 100 watts on a dipole into Europe on 80 meters was very nice.  

I decided to get my Vista laptop with only USB ports ready for contesting, if possible.  I was thinking of using N1MM, so I picked up a microHAM CW Keyer to get a WinKey interface for CW (and a nice rig interface in the same box on the same USB cable).  Before I got to N1MM, I read about TR4W, the windows offspring of TR-log (http://tr4w.qrz.ru/) and installed it.  My first challenge was figuring out where Vista put my configuration files, and solving that did take a while.  I was just starting to think, Vista isn't as bad as I heard, but it is different.

The microHAM CW Keyer installation was very straightforward as was the included rig interface to my old Orion.  Once I found the contest configuration file and edited it, TR4W was great.  I was really impressed.  A lot of nice interface features accessible with various windows made setup easier and a lot more dynamic.  My only question or observation is that there seems to be a slight delay compared to old DOS TR-log with just about any keypress.  Maybe I am just out of contest shape, but I wonder if anyone has used TR4W for SO2R where any delay is an issue?

73 -- John