[WriteLog] WriteLog PSK31 Observations

[Richard B Drake]

Don,

First I would like to thank you for your post describing a very
workable set up for the PSK Rumble. I used it and it worked great.

My biggest problem beside the tuning problems you mentioned (It's
hard to beat DigiPan for tuning in PSK signals) was that many
people put dashes or slashes between the name and location parts
of the exchange. Some also included RST in there which was just
more of a nuisance. Unfortunately, WriteLog doesn't recognize
dashes or slashes as delimiters and thus it was impossible to
click such entries into the log without having to make a manual
correction. It would also be nice if the backspace key would work
as it should in the keyboard window. For all you RTTY'ers who
haven't tried PSK yet, yes backspace works in PSK just not in
WriteLog, and when you type like I do it's the best key on the
keyboard :-).

---
73, Rich - W3ZJ


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-writelog@contesting.com
> [mailto:owner-writelog@contesting.com]On Behalf Of Don Hill
> Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 3:20 PM
> To: WriteLog Reflector
> Subject: [WriteLog] WriteLog PSK31 Observations
>
>
>
> 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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>


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