[WriteLog] WriteLog PSK31 Observations

[Don Hill]

Yesterday's TARA PSK31 Rumble was a fun event.  I used
WriteLog and it did very well.  There are a couple of things that can
be improved on.  PSK31 contesting appears to take two hands more
than RTTY.  A lot of clicking of the mouse to get the tuning correct.
This was the first time I've put WriteLog through it's paces with PSK31.

When clicking on the WriteLog PSK Control tuning indicator, it would
be more beneficial to have the cursor jump back to the QSO Entry
window so you could either hit an F key or edit the exchange.  It was
a pain to have to click back to the QSO Entry Window every time I
wanted to transmit.  Having the mouse cursor automatically go back
to QSO Entry Window would greatly speed things up and maybe
fix a couple of problems I comment on below.

To get around this I programmed the CALL, NAME & QTH buttons
in the QSO Entry window for buffers like CQ, the exchange, etc.
However, it would not take lower case letters.  It would be beneficial
to be able to send lower case from these buffers since lower case
characters are shorter and require less decoding on the other end.

Another problem with the WriteLog PSK Control window being active
is that if you accidentally hit the ESC key, the window disappears.  If
you hit the ESC key again it would reappear but on several occasions,
there would be double printing of each character on the screen.  My
call looked like AAAA55AAUU etc.  To fix this, I would have to close
down WriteLog and reopen it.  On other occasions after hitting ESC,
the window would disappear, after hitting ESC to recover the window,
the tuning indicator would no longer work and a re-boot was necessary.
Anyone else have this problem?

All this could be avoided if the WriteLog PSK Control window did not
remain active.

The AFC seems a little slow compared to some of the other PSK
programs I've used.  It seemed to take more than one mouse click
to get the indicator close enough to the signal for the AFC to tune it
in.  Maybe the indicator is too small or maybe I'm just not a very accurate
mouse clicker.

All in all, WriteLog did a good job in the contest and I enjoyed using it.
I don't know if PSK31 will ever come to replace RTTY as the choice
digital contesting mode, but I doubt it.  It's just too slow and takes more
work to make a QSO.  Plus it's an AFSK mode.  And I hate AFSK.  Any
time you send audio to the radio, you open up for a wide variety of possible
problems.

Comments welcome.

73, Don AA5AU









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