Bill
Not so much of a mental leap, my examples are more of
analogy than tautology.
In the 60's we duped contests on paper spreadsheets.
In the 70's we got the first trash 80 duping programs
going.
Now there are maps of the band and point and click
qso's.
It is true that the present virtual "radio panel" is
the algorithm for software controls, but my point was
more directed to the plasticity of software control.
I do not find virtual "radio panels" to be limiting.
For example Carl has brought out the AGC threshold
control to the "front panel" in the Orion. As well he
has 6 "buttons" that control 16 values of AGC (3x5
plus off). He could just as easily have 30 "buttons"
of AGC control on his "front panel". No amount of
firmware changes on the Orion are going to add
"buttons" to the front panel or bring out controls to
the front panel of the radio where physical buttons or
controls do not exist.
In a recent post, Carl described his "UP-X" function,
which is really a macro that sets VFO-B up X number of
khz from VFO-A, sets the radio to split, and sets the
transmitter to VFO-B, leaving control of the "knob" on
VFO-A. In 2 button presses you get the equivalent of
the sequence: (A=B, set VFO-A up X khz, a/b, set
split, VFO-A set to recieve, VFO-B set to transmit.)
This may or may not be useful in a contest, but I bet
there are macros that you can think of that would give
you an advantage. For example you could vary this
macro such that a second "UP-X" choice does the UP-X
sequence, minus the A/B step. This would leave VFO-A
as the active receiving VFO up X khz set the split and
set VFO-B to the DX stations freq. You could then
fine tune in the answering station (not the DX station
but the station who is working the DX station) in a
pileup, and get ready to call on the freq where the
DX station is actually listening. Once you fine tune,
you hit A/B and your ready to go. You could make
these choices "left click" and "right click" on a
"button" on the "front panel". The UP-X macro with
left click and right click variations can easily be
made available through the virtual "front panel", it
is not and never will be available through the Orion's
physical front panel.
Let your imagination come into play here. You are a
world class contester, what macros might increase your
productivity and give you an edge? What parts of the
contest do you spend pressing a lot of button
sequences that might better be served by one button?
Would you like the ability to define the behavior of
that one button yourself? How would you like a slider
that allowed you to adjust the pass band offset in ten
hz steps? Might that improve your ability to copy
really weak stations? It might it might not. But it
is easy to test it out in software. How about a
slider that controls the AGC decay rate available on
the "front panel". How about the ability to tune the
RF gain in conjunction with AGC decay rate and AGC
gain? Add several levels of adjustment for AGC hang
as well. All without digging through a bunch of
menus.
I am not much of a contester. I spend most of my
contesting doing S&P. One thing Carl has added to his
software are a total of 3 scratch-pad memories. He
added on also a macro button that does the following.
Lest say there is a pileup on 3505, up 2. You can set
up your rig such that the station on 3505 is in the
pass band and all set with maximum filtering and the
correct split. If the pile is too deep or you don't
quite have propagation, you may decide to tune up the
band. You store the above set up in scratch pad 1.
You set the RX back to say 600hz filtering turn off
the split and start to tune up the band while waiting
for the pile up to thin out. You get to 3515 and
decide to check 3505 again. You hit recall of SP1.
When you hit recall 3915 is stored into a memory
automatically along with its filter association. The
rig now recalls SP-1 and there is the station your
wanting to work, all set up as before with filters and
offests etc, ready for you to pounce. If the pile is
still too thick you click a "return" button and it
puts you back on 3515 with the filter set back on
600hz and the split turned off ready to continue
combing the band. You don't have to retune that 10khz
you just tuned. You don't have to reset the filter or
turn off the split. You don't even have to remember
how far up the band you got before you did the check.
You just click one button to check and another to go
back. There are 3 total scratch pads now so you can
monitor 3 pileups on 3 different bands all the while
being able to tune a given band, all with one or 2
"button" clicks. There is no physical radio panel
that is going to give you this kind of flexibility.
This is more my point. The virtual "front panel" in
reality isn't a panel at all. It is simply a
representation of code that allows you to string
together in a plastic way, complex and expandable
operations. I realize you know all of this, and I
don't mean to sound pedagogical in my tone. My point
is more to advance the argument as to where I see this
all going. To limit the conceptualization of the
"front panel" in a way that represents a hard
correspondence to the physical front panel, degrades
the utility of what the virtual "front panel" really
represents. There may be a better way to represent
this, but so far it works for me.
Another thing to consider is the processing done on a
second computer helps to a greater or lesser extent
relieve the load on the processor available in the
radio. If you had faster I/O instead of that stupid
serial port, and as Duane has suggested a better
object set, you might be able to do even more task
sharing, even up to virtually acheiving distributed
processing. For example I never use the band-scope in
the Orion. I use Carl's band scope instead. Carl's
band scope has yet to freeze on me and I can click my
way along the band seeing what the blips on the scope
represent. I can readily adjust the behavior of the
scope as well. The software band-scope is simply a
better and more stable use of the Orions feature set.
The smart contester/DXer of the future will figure out
ways to maximize his productivity with one click
solutions for his operating style. He will figure out
ways to use one button solutions to configure his
hardware automatically, as in my example of the K9AY
array/ Vertical. He will do it because that will
become his edge.
In the 70's there were no DX clusters. It took me
about 2 seasons to work DXCC on 80M. This season, I
put up new antennas here after the hurricanes and
decided to see how long it would take me to work DXCC
on 80 with the new antennas. It took me 7 weeks.
During that 7 weeks I also worked 150 countries on 40,
25 on 160, and 40 on 30M. These weren't all cluster
related. 160 and 30 were almost entirely cluster
driven, and for the first 3 weeks of that period I
didn't even have a 160M antenna. Even now the 160M
antenna is pretty sorry. I spent almost zero time
tuning those 2 bands.
I spent a lot of time tuning 80 and 40. One big
difference was while I was tuning 40 if something
showed up on 80, one click, a quick retune of the amp,
and I was there. A quick review of filtered cluster
spots accumulator in the the DX-Lab suite make it
clear if the bands were even open. It was far more
reliable than propagation programs and WWV. Certainly
there is more interest now in the low bands than in
years past. Certainly my FL QTH seems gives me an
advantage at least on some paths, over my old Illinois
QTH, but I had much better antennas in Illinois than I
have here. The comparison is not identical but it is
interesting to speculate why it is so much easier here
and now to make DXCC on 80 vs. there and then. I
think to a large extent though clearly not exclusively
it is the Orion and software integration with Carl's
program and the DX-Lab suite that has made the
difference.
73
Lee W9OY
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