[WT-support] The WinTest - WinKey Speed Issue

[Olof Lundberg]

The WinKey speed issue remains one of very few issues with an otherwise
superb program.

 

Here is what I have found out after some experimenting:

 

It is not a MicroHam issue, it is an issue between WinTest and WinKey - I
disconnected my MicroHam box and plugged WinTest straight into a WK2 box for
these checks and the problem was still there.

 

If the box "Independent speed between computer and WinKey " is checked under
Options-WinKey then the speed is indeed independent in the sense that the
paddle sends according to the pot speed and WinTest according to the WinTest
speed; both speeds are shown in the Rate window. WinTest speed can be
adjusted .with Alt-F9/Alt-F10 etc and the paddle speed with the pot. The
computer CW is sent with the speed ordered up on the computer by the
operator and remembered correctly. The paddle speed is according to the pot.
All is hunky-dory provided that you like that model.

 

This is however not the mode I want so I uncheck that box with the hope that
I can always control the speed with the WinKey pot - I want the automatic cw
and the paddle cw to be seemless. In this case the rate window shows only
one speed.

 

But here is the issue: WinTest seems to have a variable that remembers the
speed it thinks should be used when a macro is started. If you adjust the
speed with the pot while a macro is running the automatic CW is changing
speed but that speed doesn't "stick"; next time a macro is started the
previous starting speed is picked up again. This is all totally independent
of the acceleration/deacceleration commands ++ -- .

 

Not only that, the paddle also picks up that old remembered speed. It thus
appears that WinTest resets this variable as a macro finishes or perhaps
rather doesn't update the variable as it should. The speed figure in the
rate window is correct, it shows the desired speed, but that is not the
speed you get. This bug also has the effect that the pot calibration gets
out of whack and this amplifies the impression of randomness. I assume that
WinTest is using this old stored value to reset the speed in WinKey itself
as the macro finishes.

 

I think most of us would appreciate a change of this "feature" such that if
the speed stored in that variable or in WinKey is updated when the macro
finishes then it should be updated with the most recent speed used. Some of
us are very fickle - we want the F1-F7 macros to start with the speed we
last dialed up, not a speed we happened to like some time ago.

 

I hope this is helpful for the developers as they hopefully search for a
fix.

 

Olof      G0CKV - SM0CKV - W6CKV

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.f5mzn.org/pipermail/support/attachments/20080211/7d3cabd9/attachment.htm