Peter Hoon wrote:
Am mostly a CW man, studying possibility of buying the SDR1K. There are so
many outstanding features in this rig. Am seeking more information on CW
behavior of the SDR1K and solution paths. Would like comments on any one or
all of the following points:
1) Out of the box, with no workarounds, would like a report of just how
the SDR1K currently behaves on CW (I read the old description in the Oct
2005 QST article). Could you compare it to classic QSK rigs such as TT Omni
VI+, or K2, and tell me what I would actually hear at 22 to 30 WPM? Is the
side tone delayed? Do dits and dahs get cut off at the beginning? At this
reflector on March 23 Lee Crocker, W9OY, said that he encounters "variable
delays up to several hundred milliseconds" between the last key press and
when the SDR1K goes back into the receive mode. Just how does this affect
the CW man's enjoyment of the SDR1K for regular CW work?
Out of the box, it's an acquired taste. The basic problem is that we're
trying to treat Windows as if it was a real time operating system.
However, with nothing more than a standard iambic paddle put right in
the SDR "key" plug, and a little persistence, I managed to work DXCC,
from scratch, on 80 meters and all but two of the countries were with CW
and includes places like Palmyra and also Peter I on 20 meters. The 80
meter DXCC took two months. The SDR was a fabulous rig to take on that
"quest."
If you want, you can read the whole adventure at:
http://www.hamsdr.com/hamsdrForum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=5&MessageID=1
but I'll save you a long read if you're not interested and tell you
that, whatever the problems were, dealing with the CW settings were not
the problem. Not that the sending was "glitch" free. But, putting it
all in perspective, the glitches didn't stop me from working anyone and,
after a bit (and as the software improved -- some really clever things
have been done), they just fade into the background.
There's better methods I'm told (e.g. hooking up via a serial port
instead of the regular key input), but I haven't bothered with them. I
guess in my case, the taste has been acquired.
If you must have trouble-free CW, however, this is not the way to go.
Others will talk about the smarter methods and I'd listen to them.
2) Now, with a clear description of the problem in mind, tell me what
workarounds CW fellows have used to mitigate the SDR1K CW problems? How
successful are these workarounds, and what extra hardware should I plan on
purchasing? In your view, is the SDR1K satisfactory to the CW man with
these changes?
One workaround I used to use was to use the "forms" (see now the "CWX"
form). It was passable, but I've long since stopped using it. There
really is no substitute for the paddles hooked up in one manner or
another. But, that's all I can say on the topic.
3) Can you trounce this beast with pure firepower? For example, Tim
Ellison's monster, a dual Athlon core 64 bit 4400+ with plenty of L1 and L2
cache, or the Dual Core Intel Pentium D 840 3.4 GHz in top of the line Asus
mobos, with plenty of hi speed ram? (Is one CPU preferred over the other?).
In the end, it all appears to be about latency and what else you have
running. Turning off [EMAIL PROTECTED] or anything remotely equivalent probably
matters more than horsepower as such (though horsepower will help
latency, too, to an extent).
I run a single core P IV at 2.4 GHz and have better success than with my
Celeron at 1.5 GHz. I can't speak to dual core and whether it helps or
hurts.
4) Are there "CW speed sensitive" sections of code that could be
re-written in assembler and called from the main C sharp program? At about
what point in the future does the SDR1K team expect CW problems to be
resolved?
5) If the biggest part of the problem is "variable delays of several
hundred milliseconds" (since Windows XP was not designed for real time aps),
does the stripped down version of XP (http://www.litepc.com/), Windows 2000
Pro or Windows Server 20003 solve this problem?
I can't speak to these.
Larry WO0Z
