[WT-support] relfections from VP6DX

[Tõnno Vähk]

hi, great to be back at home and share some views on WT after 184k QSOs - biggest number ever made from an expedition. That was definitely a great challenge for WT.

1. As you might guess the reloading got very slow, abt 10 min max to reload all the 184k QSOs. But it worked and did not really hang. There were a few times it got slow but that was very infrequent and due to other tasks managed by computer probably.

2. Log Sheet under statistics just worked for 48 hours I believe. After that rate was not any more calculated. That was a dissapointement but luckily Continents sheet did show updated picture till the end.

3. There was a very funny occurence of $CORRECT macro starting to produce extra signs. Namely transmitting "3" in front of it sometimes. I have sometimes seen this happening also at home and I have no idea what causes it and maybe someone else can share a light on this issue.

4. QSO amount in Log window was missing the 6th digit:)) The last one was omitted.

5. A BIG BIG hassle is the CW vs RTTY messages. It was a huge burden to change them every time when you changed the mode, probably the biggest issue we had. Well, you are well aware about that:) That does not affect only DXpeditions but also contesters - ARI DX?

6. And it would be so great to have the messages finally optionally recordable to the INI file or user settings somehow. We had 7 stations and while the rest of the configuration could be copied with INI file, the messages had to be entered to each computer separately. And I really dislike doing it always for every new contest at home.

7. GAB window does not wrap the text when you decrease the window length, would be nice if it did.

8. STATUS window does not include 2nd VFO frequency. We were TXing on K3 on the 2nd VFO and RXing on 1st VFO. So operators were unable to announce TX frequencies on other bands. We developed a very clumsy solution of operators entering their TX freq as QSY freq (PASSFREQ) so it would be displayed but is was very cumbersome.

Other than that the WT worked great. Messaging worked great, especially useful over the wireless link between two camps 1 km apart.

We used 3.19 with K3 tranceivers and MKII. MKII lost connection with computer once in a while, probably due to RF, had to unlpug/plug USB cord or restart computer.

We used Winkey in MKII and as it is a custom, some strange speed changes sometimes happened but mostly OK.

If I get more comments from VP6DX ops will pass along. Thanks!

73
Tonno
ES5TV