[WriteLog] How often during a typical contest weekend do you have to restart WriteLog?

[Mike Heideman]

> the average number of hours between forced restarts of WriteLog

I'd estimate that it's about once every 24 to 48 hours on average.

Some contests don't require any restarts and others require one or
more restarts.  We usually have at least 2 networked computers running
WL and frequently use 4 or more.  We had been using 1 GHz machines
running Windows 2000 with real serial and parallel ports using WL
10.71.  We now have 2 GHz Windows XP machines with a parallel port
and USB/serial adapters using WL 10.85.

It's possible that some of the restarts could have been avoided if we
had been able to better diagnose the immediate issue.  Here are some
typical restart scenarios that I remember happening recently.

- Use of unfiltered Reverse Beacon spots causes general slowness.
This typically happens on the computer that is running telnet to
connect to the packet node.  Symptoms include delays of several
seconds in echoing entered characters, in beginning transmission
after a function key is hit, and in responding to the ESC key to abort
a transmission.  The Packet Spots and Bandmap windows are updated 
slowly and clicking on spots often goes to the wrong frequency.
Restarting WL always fixes this.  Setting up filters on the packet
node or using a separate computer to get the packet spots both help
to prevent this.

- WinKeyer keying suddenly gets large delays between characters.
This happened once recently with the inter-character spacing suddenly
changing to over a second.  Adjusting the speed with either the
computer or WinKeyer knob didn't fix the spacing issue but restarting
WL did fix it.

- Repeated pop-ups complaining about WL not responding and offering a
choice of  Retrying or Switching.  All selections result in the same
pop-up again and this blocks all access to WL.  The only way to get
out of this loop is to use Task Manager's "End Process" to kill all
of the WL windows and restart.  I haven't been able to determine what
actions result in this situation.  It occurs several times per year.

- Unable to view the packet window to connect to a packet node.
There might be a workaround to this one but it wasn't obvious to me
when it happened in the middle of a contest.  As I exited from WL I
noticed that there was a packet dialog window hidden behind the main
WL window.  It's possible that minimizing the main WL window would
have exposed this dialog window but repeated selections of "Packet
Window" did not cause the packet dialog window to appear on top of
the main WL window.

I also remember some problems with PTT being held at the end of a
transmission and not being able to turn it off.  I don't remember
what mode was being used or other details.

73,
-Mike, N7MH