[UK-CONTEST] N1MM and PSK

[Andy swiffin]

Hi

I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who used N1MM in the russian
PSK contest at the weekend to compare experiences.  I had a few
problems, although they may be due to my cruddy shack PC (PII 266, not
much RAM, windows 98se).

I hadn't played with it much before so only have myself to blame - not
that I was going to be overly serious in the contest, but....  I started
Friday evening and immediately found problems with the sent signal.  The
Digital window kept corrupting characters and I wasn't sure if that was
cosmetic or if the sent signal really was corrupt. I had 3 receive
windows plus the tx/rx one and there's a swap button to swap them into
the main one.  I found using that filled the text windows with garbage -
it looks like compiler debug info so methinks we have a program memory
problem here.  After a few goes of using swap N1MM froze up completely
with an hourglass, requiring a complete reboot to unlock it.  

I was so disheartened with this that I went through all of the PSK
software I have to see if there's anything else that would cope with
contest use, if only Digipan had serials, a log window, and a dupe
spotter...   Anyway there's nothing else that can hold a candle to N1MM
for the actual contest side so I just gave up.

I returned on Saturday lunchtime and confirmed that the outgoing audio
had weird glitches and clicks in it - but this was only with the 4
windows - when I set it down to just the single tx/rx window that all
went away and it sounded OK, of course this removes the "swap" bug as
there's nowt to swap!

I decided to have a go with that and went on 20 - sent 1 CQ and a JF2
came straight back (can't remember last time I worked Japan), 9m6/g3ook
called me a bit later too which was rather nice.  I didn't work all that
many in the end - just under the 100, I find PSK a weird mode to contest
in but its certainly efficient.  I did have a look on 40 saturday
afternoon - I've never seen so many lines on a waterfall - there just
wasn't anywhere to go what with being squeezed from below by UBA and
from above by REF, so I went back to 20 for a while before getting
seduced by some dinner (easily led astray) and then the NAQP.

Anyway - an interesting experience, I don't suppose there are many
contests which just about fit in a single SSB passband....  Quite a bit
of activity from callsigns not in SCP, and quite a few who didn't know
that a contest was going on round them - it isn't just the JA tests
where you get sent the operators age in the exchange, even if you
weren't expecting it...   (What is that with PSK - why does _everybody_ 
send you their age and when they were first licenced?   One good thing,
though, is that they all know their locator...)

If you used N1mm with psk drop me a line to say how you got on - as I
say, my problems may just be my PC, but I should probably file a bug
report.  I haven't had the heart to have a look at the N1mm list yet
(200 emails there over the weekend).

73
andy gm8oeg