[UK-CONTEST] 80m CC CW G3SJJ

[Rob Harrison]

Hi Chris,

This could be a latency problem, something is taking loads of processing 
power and upsetting the apple cart. I've had a problem on my PC, running 
Vista, Vista has a higher latency than most O/S's, which manifests itself as 
a slowing down of audio when playing a video or music, or using data modes! 
A friend of mine suspected it was something taking a lot of processing at 
certain times and suggested a little program dowloaded from here 
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml  that will shown when 
something in the PC is acting up.

In my case it turned out to be the wireless LAN adapter, apparently 
notorious for this, polling the hub every minute. Which is a bit awkward as 
I need a wireless link to be able to connect to the internet whilst using 
the radio. Anyway it may or may not find your problem, but it's intesting to 
see what's happening.

73

Bob G8HGN

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris G3SJJ" <g3sjj at btinternet.com>
To: "UK Contest Reflector" <uk-contest at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 11:10 PM
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] 80m CC CW G3SJJ



As the saying goes " You cannot be serious!!

There I was all fired up, total concentration. 116 in the first 60 minutes, 
29 in the next 17 minutes. It's looking good. After all these years I had
now realised contesting wasn't about operating the radio, which I enjoy, or 
sending CW which I also enjoy. It was about the *keyboard." Get that bit
right and you are away. Guess I learnt my trade in the paper log and pencil 
era of contesting 30-40 years ago when you had time to enjoy twiddling
your knobs! This time I concentrated solely on the *keyboard* not looking at 
the radio, or the computer screen, except just to confirm I had typed in
the correct stuff. I focussed solely on the 3 "Qwerty" rows plus the number 
row. I was using ESM so first finger of right hand only hitting Enter key,
first finger of left hand entering callsign and serial. Perfection!

Armageddon arrived exactly at 2117. Function keys just sent rubbish, 
including callsigns of QSOs made much earlier. Paddle CW went to 7 wpm and 
then
stopped. I unplugged the mHam keyer, switched off and on the K3 and finally 
had to re-boot the computer which then kept telling me there was an error.
Too flippin' true!!

I was screaming "&%$R&(*$E%$£^&*&" or similar. Need to apologise to my 
neighbours!! Eventually made 2 more Qs. Ended on 147 which should easily 
have
been 160.

Luckily my garden is 150m long and I was able to calm myself down by a brisk 
march to the far end and back twice.

OK, got rid of all that, so is the problem mHam / K1EL, or is it the Vespa 
computer. Should I change from Vespa to W7? Should I throw the whole lot
and get a moped? Seriously, it seems to a buffer problem but is it in the 
computer or a function of K1EL?

To top it all, we got an email to say our Hot Air Balloon ride scheduled for 
0700 tmw had been cancelled. Creeps, I could have inflated the thing 
myself!!

Chris G3SJJ

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