The WAS gap made visible: a worked-states set joins the cluster status cache
(distinct states over the three US entities), the status entries carry a
NewState flag wherever the state resolves (log county first, ULS licence
second), and the decode panel gains the badge in its status column plus the
filter chip alongside NEW/BAND/MODE/GRID. Colour from the shared marker
palette, so the cluster can adopt it later without a second hue.
Between the locator and the country, per its operator: the two-letter badge
anchors the eye and the spelled-out name answers it — 'SD' alone is a quiz
for a European. The status-cell badge from the first pass moves here.
Plain text, not a badge — it is a fact, not an action — placed first so a
WAS chaser can scan the column edge. Shown whenever the status cache knows
the state (log county data or the licence address).
The voice keyer grows to F1-F12 — the UI was already data-driven, so the
count constant, the F-key range and the labels are the whole change.
And the preferences stop stuttering on a busy station: every spot batch,
decode batch and CAT snapshot re-rendered the entire App tree behind the
dialog — cluster grid, decodes panel, thousands of nodes — and the pointer
janked over the very panel the operator was trying to use. While Settings is
open the flushes park their batches in the pending refs (bounded) and CAT
repaints at most every two seconds; closing the dialog drains everything.
The panel now mirrors the decoder's own window line for line — the operator
compares the two side by side, and the SNR sort scrambled that
correspondence. The report is still right there in its column.
Three faults, one report. The slow poll asks ^TP — the KPA1500's ATU, which
a KPA500 (no ATU) never answers — and ask() dropped the whole connection on
any read timeout: a two-second stall and a reconnect every slow cycle, which
is why buttons lagged and the status read wrong. Worse, every serial reopen
toggled DTR/RTS — and those lines are the KPA500's POWER SWITCH (that is how
the Elecraft utility turns it on), so the amplifier obediently switched off
twenty seconds after its operator pressed nothing but Standby.
Silence is no longer a dead link (write errors still are), ^TP is never asked
again after one silence, the control lines are asserted once and held, and
the baud field becomes a list of the rates these amplifiers actually speak.
Configure (message 15), mode field only, every other field sent as
no-change: an FT4 spot clicked while WSJT-X sits in FT8 lands the operator
ready to decode instead of staring at gibberish. Sent to every instance
heard this session — one already in the right mode treats it as a no-op —
and only for modes the decoder actually speaks (FT8/FT4/JT65/JT9/MSK144/
Q65/FST4); CW and SSB are none of its business. Toggle in the Connections
panel, on by default.
The great-circle arc to a polar entity (Franz Josef Land) peaks near 88°N;
fitting the raw arc points framed a band of tile-less white above 85°, where
Web Mercator ends. The camera's bounds are clamped to ±85° — the line still
draws to wherever it goes, only the framing stays where there is a map.
WSJT-X restates the same DX Call in every Status packet, and a spot clicked
in OpsLog put that call into the last-UDP memory (deliberately, for another
case) — so the guard let the decoder's next restatement straight through and
the entry snapped back to old news. The decoder's stream now only counts when
its value CHANGES; a clear over there resets the edge so re-selecting the
same station still lands. Explicit picks (N1MM, remote, spot relays) are
untouched.
Message 13 paints callsigns in WSJT-X/JTDX's own Band Activity window with
verdicts from the same cluster status cache that colours the spot grid:
watchlist pink, new DXCC green, new band for its entity orange. Deduplicated
per instance+call+verdict, one datagram each; a verdict that lapses (the
operator worked them) clears that call, and turning the option off clears
everything via the protocol's CLEARALL!. Off by default, switch in the
Connections panel.
Message 7 asks a program heard for the first time this session to replay the
decodes already on its screen, so the FT decodes panel starts full instead of
empty until the next period. Replayed lines arrive marked not-new and are
shown but never auto-answered — the auto-caller now checks, on top of its
30-second freshness gate.
The operator preferred the original's aesthetics. Adopted: the signature pink
callsign (a fixed identity colour, like the cluster palette), counters as
coloured pills, a quieter card surface with a hover, a stronger needed bar on
spot rows, and the lightning bolt back on the DXpedition badge. Everything
else stays on theme tokens.
The operator measured the whole table: 10 W showed 83, 12 W showed 100, 13 W
showed 8 — the bargraph is relative to a meter RANGE that flips at 12 W
(0-12 QRP, 0-120 above). A bar percentage was never watts; with the PC
setting choosing the range, it converts, and the console prints the watts
beside the bar.
Two lookups race when a second callsign is typed before the first answered,
and the slow one landed last: the grid showed the previous call's QSOs under
the new call's name — LU5AVM's contact filed under LW8ETV, screenshot in
hand. A request token now discards any response that is not the newest.
The inference tables knew FT8 on some bands and nothing on others: a 10.136
spot with a bare comment read as generic DATA — which is what every
skimmerless spot of a DXpedition's 30 m FT8 slot did. The standard FT8/FT4
windows are added on 30 m, 60 m, 80 m (FT4), 17 m (FT4) and 12 m, in BOTH
tables (backend band plan and frontend spot.ts), ahead of the wide segments
they sit inside — order is the mechanism there.
The console's thin home-made bars were the one holdout — every other panel
(Flex, Elecraft, the amps, the tuner) draws the same MeterBar. And the mode
badge said SSB, which on any band leaves the operator guessing which
sideband the rig is on: the panel now shows USB or LSB (the log keeps ADIF's
SSB).
It keeps 'not repeating' on a network rig and every guess at which guard was
tripping proved wrong. Each round now logs play / playing-flag / end / gap,
and every exit names its reason.
The blind kill at connect still left a real 7760 streaming — the selector
byte differs by model, and the result was discarded so a quiet failure looked
like a cure. Both forms go out now (a NAK costs one frame) and the outcomes
are logged. The power table also gains its third measured anchor: a real
200 W reads full deflection, so raw 213 is 200 W — not the printed face's
250.
Over the network the rig's mode read fails now and then and the CAT push
blanks the mode for a poll or two; the auto-CQ loop treated that blank as
'not a phone mode' and stopped after the first call. Only a KNOWN non-phone
mode stops the loop now.
The CI-V meters are point samples: between two SSB syllables a poll lands on
0 W and a perfect SWR, so a 150 W transmission read 0-10 W most of the time
and the SWR sat at 1.0. Power now decays like a needle and SWR holds its peak
then snaps to the live value — the same meterPeak the Yaesu and Kenwood
consoles already use. The readout column also widens so '180 W' stays on one
line.
TUNE (1C 01 02) started a cycle; nothing sent the 0 that puts the tuner back
through. An ATU chip beside SPLIT now toggles it, and the tuner state is read
on the slow front-panel beat so the radio's own TUNER button stays in sync.
Added on a report that they were missing; they were below the fold, not
absent. The useful parts stay: the MOX button routes the PC microphone on a
network station, split aligns the TX VFO's mode, and SetIcomSplitOffset
remains available for a future use.
Every Icom streams its waveform differently: the IC-7851 controls a scope it
never streams, and a real IC-7760 stops answering CI-V altogether a few
frames in — taking CAT and the audio down with it, which is this week's whole
dropout saga. Chasing a per-model frame layout for a decoration is not worth
a console that drops the link; the radio's own scope is better anyway. The
backend scope plumbing stays (harmless while nothing enables it); the UI and
its enable path go.
Keying alone is right on USB, where the operator talks into the radio's own
mic; over the LAN it transmitted silence. The console button now goes through
one binding that picks the road: network To-radio → the same key-and-stream
path as the Talk button, USB → key and nothing more.
The MOX and SPLIT controls lived at the bottom of the Transmit card, below
the fold on most layouts — a console whose PTT needs scrolling is not a
console. A strip under the mode row now carries the PTT and Split as
OFF/+1k/+5k/+10k, DXpedition style, on a new SetIcomSplitOffset that takes
the chosen TX offset (0 keeps the old CW/SSB convention). The mode-alignment
from the previous fix rides along on every engage.
Its enable condition predated the network audio: with From-radio empty — the
normal network setup — the button was greyed out, and an operator who had
stopped listening had no way to start again from this panel. The stale 'later'
hints on both buttons said the network paths did not exist; they do.
The unselected VFO was read only when split was on, so a dual-receiver rig's
second dial sat blank on the console. It is now read on the same slow beat
regardless. And engaging split copies the main's mode (and data flag) onto
the TX VFO with 0x26 01 — a split whose TX VFO still speaks yesterday's mode
transmits FM into a CW pileup; rigs that predate 0x26 NAK it harmlessly.
Same remembered preference as the console's speaker button, surfaced where
the stream itself is enabled — tick RX audio and decide in the same breath
whether it reaches the speakers. Applied immediately, no save needed.
Muting the network RX audio took a trip through Settings → Audio → Stop
listening — two panels away from the console the operator is actually using.
A speaker button now sits beside ON/OFF (network only, like them): one click
to listen or mute, the recorder and the voice keyer unaffected, the choice
remembered across reconnects and launches.
The CI-V keyer is the same 0x17 command on the same IcomController whatever
carries the link; only the warnings and enable checks insisted on the USB
backend, telling a network operator their working keyer would fail.
Two halves of the same station confusion. The entry form pre-filled MY_RIG
from the per-band default on every band change, so the log-time priority (the
radio that is keying beats the radio that was planned) never ran — the field
was no longer empty by the time the backend looked. The form now asks the
active radio first, through a new ActiveRadioMyRig binding.
And the manual record button started its capture from the From-radio sound
card unconditionally, where the automatic recorder already knew a network
Icom's audio is pushed from the 50003 stream: a manual take on the IC-7760
was a faithful recording of the Flex's DAX. Same source rule for both, and
the button is offered with no sound card at all when the network stream is
the source.
Two effects, wrong order: the ticking effect ran before the reset effect on a
new take, so its closure captured the PREVIOUS take's elapsed as its starting
point — the counter showed 0 for one second and then jumped back to thirty
minutes. Effects run in declaration order; the reset now comes first.
A known 50 W read raw ~89 where the two-segment curve said 62: the face is
not linear in watts below half scale. Watts now interpolate through the
measured points (50 W, 100 W, full-scale 250 W); refining the curve is adding
a row to the table.
The power meter applies Icom's own meter calibration (raw 143 = half
deflection, 213 = full scale) anchored against the real radio: a measured
100 W sits at half deflection of the 7760's 250 W face — the linear guess
showed it as 140. The RF power slider says watts on a 200 W rig instead of a
percentage the operator has to convert.
And the Listening button, pressed while a network Icom is connected, restarts
the monitor render-only: it used to open a USB capture from the From-radio
device as well, and that second producer interleaved with the network pushes
chopped the audio to pieces.
The loader looked for an 'active' flag the radio list has never carried, so
reopening the panel always landed on the first entry — Radio 1's name over
whichever radio's settings were live, and every field edit (MY_RIG included)
silently rewriting the wrong entry. The backend is the only one who knows
which radio is on the air; ask it.
The console gains a DATA mode button (USB-D, what FT8 and friends ride on);
the PSK button now maps to the rigs' native PSK mode (0x12) instead of erroring
as an unknown mode — rigs without one NAK it, exactly as RS-BA1's button does
there. The power meter shows real watts on the IC-7760, whose meter face runs
to 250 W where a 100 W rig's percentage was the watts. The clickable S-meter
gets a pointer cursor so it looks like what it is.
Network audio: rxcodec 0x04 — the experiments on the real 7760 settle the
codec table (0x10 = 16-bit stereo, 0x02 = 8-bit mono, both heard as garble),
and 0x04 is the 16-bit mono the playback path actually plays.
The S-unit mapping was provisional, waiting for a real radio. One arrived:
side by side with a K3's own display, raw 5 reads S7 and raw 9 reads S9+20,
so S9 sits near raw 6.5 — not 9 — and each raw step above it is worth ~8 dB.
The old scale showed everything two S-units low.
The SWR meter borrowed the power meter's needle inertia — hold the peak, then
close a quarter of the gap per poll. The K3 throws a brief SWR spike as an FT8
frame ends, and that decay turned one bad sample into twelve seconds of red on
the next transmission. SWR now holds the peak for the same 1.5 s and then
snaps back to the live reading: it is a warning light, not a needle.
Double-clicking a cluster spot tuned the slice and zoomed the panadapter in
the same breath. On a cross-band jump SmartSDR moves the panadapter itself to
follow the slice, and that follow lands after — and overrides — a zoom sent in
the same instant, so the width the operator configured never appeared. A spot
clicked ON the panadapter never hit this, because the radio had already tuned
before our zoom arrived; the two paths now behave the same. The Chase new
panel's pick is sequenced identically.
rouggy