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

Saturday 7 June 2014

President Lincoln II V3 cw mode testing

What a difference a day makes. I have discovered some more detail on the firmware fault I described in an earlier post. The long "dah" at start of transmission seems only to occur when the input key closure duration is very quick. I connected a manual key and couldn't see the problem I had before, although another problem has reared it's head (more later). I re-connected the keyer and just sent 1 "dit" then waited till the rig unkeyed, the plan being to discover how to involke the long "dah" bug. After each successful test (no long "dah" sent) I then increased the speed of the keyer. I got to about 20wpm before the long "dah" bug appeared. With the above information I turned the keyer down to just under 20wpm and made a few cq calls. Ray GM0MNV up in Glenrothes came back to me and I enjoyed a successful cw QSO with him. Unfortunately this is where I discovered a second firmware bug. The time to PTT from key closure is too long with the result being the initial cw character is chopped. If the first cw element you send is a "di" then this is non existant on the output (not good if you are working EA). If the first cw element you send is a "dah" then this is chopped. A work around is to always send an initial "di" before the start of every transmission (you can't manually close the PTT from the mic in cw mode). Time from cw key input to PTT closure may be fixable in firmware or at least improved...V4?. There may be a hardware limitation of how much this can be improved, but we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime I've worked DL,EA,HB,HA and GM all good fun. Delay to open PTT at the end of transmission is about right and a speed of 18WPM-20WPM seems to work out fine without the PTT opening and closing during transmission (lower limit probably about 12WPM) however you cannot set this delay in the menu....V4?. I'm getting to like this wee rig, no real show stoppers, but it's got a long way to go in terms of firmware improvement till it get's to the capabilities of the worst cw ham radio. PS. I have since re-connected the manual keyer and found that the "long dah" bug can also be seem if a quick stab at the key is made. Please get in touch if you discover any work arounds for the above bugs or even if you need more detail on them. "long dah" link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhn2IufG4nM "PTT too slow" link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEb-MjWuok

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