[WriteLog] Post-contest comments

2001年10月28日 19:46:12 -0600

At 06:17 PM 10/28/2001 , Barry N1EU wrote:
>1. Soundcard keying just quit on me suddenly ... Does anybody else 
>experience this? (BTW, I'm also running DXTelnet)

No problems here.
>2. Speaking of which, because it's not all that unusual to have to exit 
>and restart WriteLog it would sure be nice to have the option of 
>saving/restoring Packet spots, which are currently lost as soon as you 
>exit the program. Trying to refill the packet spot window with the 30 
>minutes of good spot collecting that you just lost is otherwise 
>impossible, sh/dx not withstanding. This option would obviously only be 
>used with immediate restarting (due to program glitch), and not if you 
>went QRT for any length of time. I can't overstate the need for this in 
>light of the fact that the soundcard functionality gets lost intermittently.

You can do better than sh/dx -- do sh/dx/100 to get the last 100 spots (or 
200 or whatever.) When you restart WriteLog, you're going to have to 
re-establish your connection to the cluster (maybe the DXTelnet interface 
doesn't require that) - so issuing one more command is not a big deal.
BTW - I don't think a 30 minute old spot is of much value, especially in a 
contest like CQWW - other than the really big guns (whom you've probably 
already worked), it doesn't seem that anyone sits on a frequency for 
anywhere close to 30 minutes.
>3. Seems like a no brainer, but why aren't country and zone mults (color) 
>coded differently in the bandmap and packet spot window, with double mults 
>obviously marked? If nothing else, it would be nice to see double mults 
>stand out.

Seems like a good idea! An obvious reason it's not done is that it would 
place significantly higher load on the CPU every time a spot shows up, and 
there are lots of people running marginal systems (and to me, anything less 
than a Pentium II 350 is "marginal" for efficient use of WriteLog. You can 
purchase a perfectly adequate system to use with WriteLog for 200ドル to 300ドル 
- see places like www.retrobox.com and www.computersurplusoutlet.com.)
-Marty NW0L
 martyt@pobx.com