I used 6.70 in NAQP CW a couple weeks ago, and it was flawless, as usual.
With the nearly identical setup in NAQP SSB, however, I would always get
the "enter frequency in kHz" message whenever I'd check a call on the
second radio while transmitting on the first radio. I can't seem to
figure out why that happens on SSB 100% of the time, and maybe only 0.5%
of the time on CW (presumably when there is an error on the RS-232 line to
the second radio). With those percentages, I can't believe it's always an
RF problem on phone (with 100 W), but almost never an RF problem on CW
(even with legal limit in other contests).
In both contests, I had the band map enabled, and "NO POLL DURING PTT =
TRUE". After getting tired of having to escape out of that message every
time on SSB, I tried changing no poll to FALSE. That didn't make any
difference. I eventually resorted to turning off the band map, and that
made the problem go away. Of course, it also made the band map go away!
While the band map isn't critical in NAQP, I'd still like to understand
what was going on.
The only significant difference I can think of in the setup is that I had
the footswitch mode set to dupe check in CW, and normal for SSB (where I
used Alt-D to check a call on the second radio).
Related comment: It would be cool to support multiple footswitches.
Then, for SSB contests, I'd do something like this:
FOOT SWITCH 1 PORT = 1
FOOT SWITCH 2 PORT = 2
FOOT SWITCH 1 MODE = NORMAL
FOOT SWITCH 2 MODE = DUPECHECK
Unrelated note (but related to N4AF's comments): I've also found it a bit
annoying that if I type in a freq for a quick QSY, it disables the
clarifier (at least on my Mark-V Field). I personally like to keep the
clarifier on for radio 1 the whole contest, but leave it cleared (zeroed).
But if I type in "14005" to QSY to that freq, I have to manually
re-enable the clarifier. It would be nice if TR Log checked the clarifier
status prior to a QSY, then set it the same way after the QSY. But in the
grand scheme of things, this is way down the list of priorities.
73,
Tim Totten, n4gn@n4gn.com
http://www.n4gn.com
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