Joe, Thanks for the reply - I am really pleased that the RR73 problem is in fact a bug. I can tell you that it is driving FOX operators nuts on expeditions. I guess we should have spoken up sooner.
As for the band activity window, unfortunately the premise of having a well advertised channel window etc sounds good in theory - but in practice, with so many expeditions around at times each with differing levels of "advertising" knowhow, that theory is breaking down. For example, when I was on Tonga last month as A35JT, there were 5 expeditions present at the same time (eg ZK3A, A82X etc). We also found particularly on 40m that we also had to dodge QRM, finding our advertised channel full of SSB and other rubbish which forced us to be flexible and to QSY on the fly (fortunately we had internet so using the cluster to advertise the change was relatively easy for us - it isn't always so). The ability to pre-plan on everyone having their own slot on every band (given a slot is 3-4kHz and some bands are only 15kHz wide) really doesn't work in peak expedition season. (My attempts to in fact plan and coordinate with the other expeditions failed also. Despite sending A35JT's proposed band plans to several of them months beforehand, putting the data on social media and on our website, I still had "larger" expeditions ignore me and jump my proposed A35JT frequencies for themselves). Bottom line - FOX operators need some channel awareness to avoid these collisions. An in built band activity window is vital. As for running a second instance, we did consider it - but facing fox mode with 5 channels and hundreds of callers some of our laptops on the expedition started to run out of grunt and screen real-estate given N1MM is also active. To be practical, it really needs the band activity window visible native in FOX mode within the instance the operator is running. A quick fix might be to report to a FOX operator if a hound is calling another station other than yours in the receive window - coloured with a different colour. This at least would provide some warning that a channel clash has occurred. Adding the band activity window back can be a topic for later after that. (I have some ideas for how to potentially improve the FOX mode operator experience too which perhaps the window idea could be better incorporated within - more on this later). Regards, Grant VK5GR -----Original Message----- From: Joe Taylor [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, 19 November 2019 3:48 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [wsjt-devel] FT8 Fox and Hound Mode - FOX Mode Operator enhancement request Hi Grant and all, Thanks for reporting the bug in WSJT-X v2.1.0 that causes *Tx Enable* to be turned off when Fox sends RR73. We knew about this issue and corrected it several months ago, back in August, but -- having received no complaints from users -- we have been waiting to issue a bug-fix release until several other issues are resolved. We will schedule a release of WSJT-X v2.1.1 soon. Your other request, to have standard "Band Activity" displayed when in Fox mode, will not be addressed in v2.1.1. Code for Fox mode is based on an understanding that you (the Fox) will have a well-advertised band segment to yourself. Have you tried simply running a second instance of WSJT-X, in normal mode, so that you can monitor what's going on in a difficult situation? -- 73, Joe, K1JT _______________________________________________ wsjt-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel _______________________________________________ wsjt-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel
