The good news is that I logged more QTC's than ever before in WAE RTTY!
This was my first year using N1MM+ instead of N1MM.
But that also means that I have a lot of experience, not all positive,
using the new QTC Receive window.
A couple things I noticed:
1: Point-and-click on correctly printed QTC Group and QTC Exchange info
usually worked right.
2: Manual typing, or manual corrections of QTC exchange info, is very
painful. Tab and space did not seem to work right. Often tab or space past
the right hand end of a manually entered line brought me back to the
beginning of the same line and I had to use the mouse to move to the next
line. I would much rather never have to take my hands off the keyboard
while typing QTC's!
3: Every so often, while I was typing, I would find that N1MM+ had erased
the info I had in there and replaced it all with "---". I am a bit
uncertain on exactly what caused this.
4: Hitting the "Agn" button ERASES the previous copy in the window. That is
really painful. If I have for example 2 of the 3 fields on the line right -
say time and call but want to check the serial number - and I hit "Agn 1" I
have to start from scratch because the previous info gets erased the
instant I hit "Agn 1". This is not very conducive to iterating over a
couple different repeats of the QTC line to get all 3 elements correct.
Iterating over multiple prints of an exchange or call, piecing the correct
information from bad prints on each try, is VERY important to advanced RTTY
contesting.
5: Once N1MM+ completely locked up while I was trying to correct QTC info.
6: The default text sent by "SAVE" at the bottom is not the worst thing in
the world but not the best either. A S&P station hitting SAVE announces his
callsign at the end of the QTC with a "DE" which is a practice that is more
commonly associated with a running station. But obviously a lot of us were
using N1MM+ so I knew this was just the default text and not a station
announcing that he owns the frequency.
Pretty soon I learned how to avoid the worst of the problematic items and I
logged well over 1000 QTC's this contest.
I will try writing these up for the N1MM+ developers but they seem to
usually misunderstand what I was trying to write.
On a "less than obnoxious note", the PSK guys who come over to RTTY, and do
"upside down" S&P exchanges by sending their exchange info in response to a
CQ, or who wrap up a QSO with an unncecssary "TU DE (hiscall)", only bit me
a few times. I'm thinking these PSK guys must be using some non-contest
digital software with these pre-programmed exchanges that are upside-down,
and they just don't know any better. Yet some of them had a few hundred
QSO's so maybe these are hardwired into non-contest digital software? Or
the PSK guys just don't learn?
On 40M I was called by a Sardinian (yeah, new mult!) who then proceeded to
send a 4 minute RTTY brag file using very eloquent and wordy English
(yuck!).
Tim N3QE
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