[WriteLog] Advice for switching from TR to WL

[Rick Tavan N6XI]

I switched from tr to WL in October 2003 and never looked back. I did
it for one reason only - ease of integration. Most of the runtime
operational characteristics of tr were still better than WL then, but
WL has been catching up rapidly.  This is not just my fingers getting
trained but rather the result of some very important improvements to
WL over the past year. But with respect to integration, WL is so far
superior to tr that it is justified for all but the most masochistic
technoguru. I adopted WL because I wanted to add telnet spotting,
field fillin, auto rotor control, friend acknowledgement and
integrated voice keying to my repertoire. I also wanted to use the
same operating system for logging that I use for email, web and
desktop applications. I got all this installed and working in a few
days, less time than it would have taken to do almost any individual
task with tr.

I didn't have to change any hardware. I use a DX Doubler for SO2R
switching. It accepts the same signal from the LPT port that
designates which rig is transmitting. I don't recall having to specify
the pin explicitly but maybe I did or maybe the defaults just worked
out.  My laptop has a single serial port that I now use to control the
rotor. I connect  a dual serial port adapter via a USB hub that also
drives a printer and a Palm cradle. (I have to disable the Palm
Hotsynch daemon while using WL.)  I connect the two radio serial
cables to the USB-serial adapter. I just tell the WL Setup Ports
dialog which radio type is on which port using drop-down lists and
guessing at the mapping of COMn. The WL interactions between Setup
Ports and Bands | Set Freq and Mode dialogs are annoying but tenable
once you figure them out.

The documentation is pretty weak. You get online Help files which can
be printed in one swell foop and you get the K9JY website. They each
have overlapping subsets of the info and are hard to use. The K9JY
site has at least some task orientation.  In my opinion, documentation
is the biggest remaining weakness of WL. Fortunately, WL works well
and most of its user interface and integration functionality is
transparent or discoverable. There is good assistance available on
this reflector and from local friends who have made the switch. I
wrote a support files redux that I wish I had had when getting
started.

Bottom line: WL still requires more runtime keystrokes than tr but the
number is reasonable and the ease of integrating WL with hardware and
other software is light-years ahead of tr. I think the tradeoffs are
overwhelmingly in favor of WL.

GL & 73,

Rick N6XI 


On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:45:17 -0500, SJ W3TX <superberthaguy at adelphia.net> wrote:
> I am considering switching from TR to WL and need some advice. I have an
> exceptional so2r setup using TR, and hope that WL can adapt into it with no
> (or a a minimum of) wiring changes.
> 
> With regard to the serial pin connections between rig and computer, and
> parallell pin connections between computer and top ten band decoder, paddles
> input, ptt output (which controls my audio switching), etc, are the pin
> outputs/inputs the same or different?
> 
> Is there a hidden reference available for WL's serial and parrallel pin
> assignments on the website or elsewhere that I can look at ?? (I've been
> unable to find one).
> 
> Does WL include simple import/export/LOTW interfaces?
> 
> Finally, what are the biggest reasons that you switched from TR to WL?
> 
> Thanks in advance and 73, Scott W3TX