[WT-support] Slow rotator read-out

[W2RU - Bud Hippisley]

I have installed a Green Heron RT-20 (serial port, not USB) rotor control into my Win-Test set-up on COM4 (regular PCI card) of my PC with Win7 Pro 64-bit OS.  Eventually I found the Wiki page for setting up rotor control, and I have followed it in every detail.  It is an excellent write-up.  However, I have two questions:

1.  How do wtRotator.exe and the rotor controller determine the signalling speed in use on the COM port?  I don't find any way to force a specific speed when the rotor controller is capable of multiple speeds.  (I normally set the Green Heron to 4800-8-N-1, the original DCU-1 spec.)

2.  The little display window that shows the rotor heading and allows manual control of the rotor SERIOUSLY lags the actual real-time beam heading as it appears on the front panel display of the Green Heron.  When rotating a TailTwister from Europe to Japan the short way, the Win-Test heading display can be as much as 40 or 50 seconds and/or degrees behind!

Bud, W2RU