Re: ARRL 160m

[Drew Arnett]

I played for a couple of hours with the 160m contest as well from a
very noisy location, so not very many QSOs.  Worked a big gun east of
the Mississippi, but no KG4 for me.  :-)  Didn't consult with Nate for
rules or config file.  Just grabbed the distributed arrl160m_usa rules
and merged a bit from my own files from the last contest.

I worked a couple of stations during auto CQ, and the rest in S&P.
Messages and ESM both worked great.  I guest operated at another
station for a bit during CQ WW.  They weren't using ESM.  Wasn't bad
using the function keys, but I missed ESM as someone how can touch
type.

I've noticed that clear the call field behavior of the ESC key as
well.  If there is an alternate behavior that makes sense and doesn't
make ESM worse, I'd love to consider it.  It is slightly annoying, but
I didn't fret over it too much, as I figured it was good practice for
short term callsign memory.  If getting a fill is taking time, it
might push the limits of my short term memory, though.

Best regards,

Drew
n7da

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 3:35 PM Nate Bargmann <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Well, first off, the use of cwdaemon and Tlf via Hamlib on the same
> serial port (real motherboard port) worked perfectly without a problem
> throughout my operating time.  I missed Saturday evening due to having
> aggravated my hip yesterday and had to lay down.  I was up around 0830z
> this AM and worked a bit over an hour and had to lay down for a while
> and then again from about 1140z to 1420z or thereabouts.  The hip is
> feeling batter!
>
> My CT changes didn't get used much as I saw I had Alt-1 set for the
> exchange I wanted to send in S&P mode so that I didn't have to edit the
> F3 message all the time.  Making sure that Enter didn't log an
> incomplete contact did prove useful in the wee hours...
>
> ESM mode for running worked perfectly.
>
> Combining Escape to halt the CW message and clearing the input fields is
> a double edged sword.  When there is text in the call and exchange
> fields and the cursor is in the exchange field and a CW message is in
> progress, the first ESC stops the TX and the second clears the exchange
> field and the third clears the call field.  This is fine so far as it
> goes.  When the call field has characters in it and the cursor is in the
> call field and the exchange field is empty, a single ESC stops the TX
> AND clears the call field!  That led to several ARGH! moments.  I think
> that a better algorithm could be worked out.
>
> Scoring is completely wrong but ARRL 160 is difficult to score.  Tlf
> several times counted an incorrect multiplier.  For one I worked a KG4
> in VA and Tlf scored it as the KG4 mult when it should have determined
> that the VA meant it was conus.  Another time or two I fat fingered an
> exchange and removed the text from the mult column but even a :RES
> command had no apparent effect.  Also, it seemed as though coming back
> from an :EDI command resulted in Tlf forgetting any previous dupes even
> though they're marked as zero points.
>
> In the end, the main thing is that the Cabrillo file is correct and ARRL
> will take care of the scoring.
>
> Overall, I enjoyed using Tlf again.
>
> 73, Nate
>
> --
>
> "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
> possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
>
> Web: https://www.n0nb.us
> Projects: https://github.com/N0NB
> GPG fingerprint: 82D6 4F6B 0E67 CD41 F689 BBA6 FB2C 5130 D55A 8819
>