Should contest rules allow and act upon 599K QRM reports?

Tuesday 3 May 2011

GB5TI cw pile-ups with N1MM

I have used N1MM twice before, enough to be able to log with it, but never in any great detail. Initial CQ calls brought one or two callers then we were spotted and all hell broke loose. I'd never operated split with N1MM before and instantaniously hit problems:

1) If I tuned the A VFO over the pile-up the software took me out of run mode and sent the S&P macros instead. I noticed it doing it and got into the routine of putting it back in run mode every time it jumped out. Later (and after much swearing from me) Gordon MM0GPZ found a selection in the setup menus to stop this happening.
2) I had to use the key to send partial calls to whittle the pile-up. The tent was freezing and the tent walls were flapping off my key hand making things difficult. If I tried to use ESM it tried to log the partial call. The solution was known by Bill GM4ZNC who recommended I type a ? after the partial call which served to send the partial call query but not to try and log it. Then it highlighted the ? ready to be over-typed with the full call.
3) Two or three times whilst trying to edit the callsign field, N1MM would engage the RIT and move my RX frequency. This might be a handy feature for casual operating, but was a real pest for me during GB5TI. I now know that this was due to me accidentally pressing the up or down arrow keys when editing the callsign field.

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