[WriteLog] SSCW 2010 K0HB

[Radio K0HB]

Good conditions, poor station performance.  We pledged 150K and had an actual goal of 175K, but missed by a big margin.

Call Sign: K0HB
Operator(s) : K0HB K0CKB
Category : MULTIOP (High Power)

    Band    QSOs    
     80     262
     40     235
     20     324
     15      41

Mults: 79 (No ND)

Total Score: 862Q’s x 2 x 79 = 136,196

Contest started strong on 15M capturing almost all W6/W7 mults in the first half hour, and then things started to go downhill.

We use WriteLog and the rig interface is a microKEYER-II (embedded K1EL “winkey”).  Upgraded to the latest version of WriteLog just prior to the contest. 

Over the past several seasons this combination has been bullet-proof, but about a half hour into the contest started to have odd keying behavior.  The keying stream would randomly drop a character or two for no apparent reason.  For example, if I sent an exchange like “K1ABC 11 M K0HB 65 MN”, it might drop the “H” in K0HB and insert a space there, resulting in “K1ABC 11 M K HB MN”.  But the missing “H” did not die --- it would appear later at some inappropriate time, either keying up the rig when I was in receive mode copying an exchange, or in the middle of some later transmitted string!  These come-back-to-life characters were not random – they were always the actual AWOL characters previously dropped.

The problem was not predictable, but would show up after about a half hour operating, give or take, and get progressively worse quickly, to the point of transmitting a gibberish consisting of the current transmit string (often missing characters) and inclusion of previously dropped characters come back to life.  

Closing WriteLog and restarting it did not clear the problem.  In fact, while out of WriteLog, sometimes a vagrant character would surface and key the rig!  It was if some characters were delayed in the OS (Win7) between the application and the USB output port.  The only way to resolve the issue was to reboot the computer.  After reboot, things would run nicely for usually about a half hour.

Did I mention it is a new computer?  We replaced our shack/office computer back in May.  It’s a 64-bit Win7 machine with oodles of memory and a quad-core processor.  Before this weekend, we’d only done some casual CW contesting with no problems on  this machine, but it seems the problem takes about a half hour of activity to manifest itself.

Well, after a couple hours of operate/reboot/operate/reboot we decided that the patient needed a computer-transplant.  The previous computer had been given to a grandkid, so we had to resurrect a 2nd-previous machine out of the garage rafters.  Bear in mind we were well into the contest, and wanted to continue our log without manually retyping all the existing Q’s.  Best way to do that would be a thumb drive, but they’d all gone into hiding, so before decommissioning the current machine, I sent my log to myself as an email attachment and closed down quickly before it “came back”.

Transplanted the old machine into the station, and found it had no WriteLog installed, so then had to download/install the current version.  Also had to update the microHAM router program to match the new firmware in the microKEYER-II.  Then gathered my email with the log attached and copied it into the appropriate directory.

Finally got the transplants and transfusions complete, and after some sleep the old Win-XP machine performed like a champ for the remainder of the contest.  So it wouldn’t seem to be a WriteLog problem.  Seems more like some characters stopped in the OS someplace for lunch before heading out the USB port.  So is it a Win7 issue, or a RF-sensitive computer?  The problem was manifested ONLY in the CW keying problem --- otherwise the computer and Writelog did NOT hiccup in any other sense.  Seems like RF would affect other things in addition to this keying problem?

Ended up with about 19 hours operating time, but missed a lot of good rate-time on Saturday evening, so missed our goal by quite a bit.  No sweep – missed ND. Never even heard one, although I heard a pileup working a whisper-thin K5xxx on 15 Sunday afternoon which seemed to be NW of me.  Other than that possibility, never even smelled something likely to be ND.

73, de Hans, K0HB
--
"Just a boy and his radio"
--
Proud Member of:
A1 Operators - http://www.arrl.org/a-1-op
MWA - http://www.W0AA.org
TCDXA - http://www.tcdxa.org
CADXA - http://www.cadxa.org
LVDXA - http://www.lvdxa.org
CWOps - http://www.cwops.org
SOC - http://www.qsl.net/soc
TCFMC - http://tcfmc.org
--
Sea stories here ---> http://k0hb.spaces.live.com/
Request QSL at ---> http://www.clublog.org/logsearch/K0HB
All valid QSL requests honored with old fashioned paper QSL!
LoTW participant