[WriteLog] RFI and Writelog

[David Hachadorian]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald Stuy" <r.stuy1 at chello.nl>
To: <writelog at contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 2:12 PM
Subject: [WriteLog] RFI and Writelog


Hello,

Last week I was on a little DX-pedition in Gibraltar.
After 2 days I got RFI problems with my laptop, the CW was not working 
fine
anymore.
So I tried to use a lot of ferrite coils, but no results at all. I 
changed
the position of laptop and radio and so on, still no results.

There was only one solution for that moment and it was: changing 
Writelog
for CTwin.
With CTwin there was no RFI problem at all.
What could be the problem? Is there some hardware component in the 
laptop
that is used by Writelog and not by CTwin?

The OS on the laptop is Windows XP Professional.
Writelog version 10.50D
DirectIO for LPT-port.
Radio: K2/100

------------------------------

I have found that CW keying and push-to-talk functions on LPT ports 
are quite sensitive to RFI. For that reason, I have converted over to 
serial ports for those signals at my station. For my XP laptop, I use 
one USB to serial converter for cw and rig control on that one serial 
port. The model I use is a Belkin F5U103, which also functions on fsk. 
They are available on EBay in the USA and EU. Probably any generic usb 
to serial converter would work for cw and rig control.

I don't know why CT and Writelog should be different in this regard, 
but when someone mentions RFI and LPT, an alarm bell goes off for me.

Good luck.

Dave Hachadorian, K6LL
Yuma, AZ