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.
A connect that lasts 50 ms leaves nothing to say which answer the client
disliked — WSJT-X refusing to attach to the shared CAT was undiagnosable
without the full wire trace. The handshake is now always logged; steady-state
polling stays behind the trace switch.
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.
One placeholder per id in a single IN (…) hits SQLite's bound-variable cap:
bulk field set died at 168 000 QSOs with 'too many SQL variables' (10 000
passed). One chunker now serves bulk set (text/int/extra/frequency), the
delete, the post-upload markers and the export-selection iterator — the last
collecting and sorting once at the end so its chronological contract holds
across chunks. 500 ids a statement keeps every backend far from any limit.
Tried on the real IC-7760: the magic packet wakes nothing; Icom's own
mechanism is the network-standby session plus the CI-V power-on, which
OpsLog already does. The MAC store and the WOL sender go, and the changelog
entry with them. The CI-V pump now says once per session that the client
pings are armed — invisible pings read as absent pings.
wfview sends a ping (0x07, 0x15 bytes, its own seq and a monotonic
timestamp) every 500 ms on every stream, and so does RS-BA1. OpsLog only
ever REPLIED to the rig's pings — and the loaner IC-7760 stopped serving
CI-V data about a minute into nearly every session while the transport
stayed alive: the rig had concluded nobody was listening. Scope, TX audio
and idle numbering were each eliminated in turn before wfview's source
settled it. Pings now go out on control, CI-V and audio alike.
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.
A 7760 switched fully off takes its LAN server down, and no session means no
console and no ON button — the one thing remote operation cannot tolerate.
The rig's MAC is learned from every login and persisted; when a dial finds
nobody home, the magic packet goes out to it before the next attempt. The
rig wakes into standby, the session opens, and the ON button does the rest.
The generic Freq write lands on the TX VFO when split is engaged: an FT-2000
moved B and left A — the receiver — behind, so a spot click QSYed the
transmitter and nothing audible changed; without split the same write moved A.
With split on (and the operator on MAIN), FreqA and FreqB are both written,
so the radio arrives on the spot whole, split left as the operator had it.
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.
Every idle went out with seq 0, seven a second, interleaved with
properly-numbered data — where RS-BA1 and wfview draw idle sequence numbers
from the same counter as everything else. A rig that follows the sequence
tolerates the zeros for a minute or so and then stops serving CI-V data on
the stream: the shape of every dropout the loaner IC-7760 has shown, with the
scope and the TX path both since eliminated as causes. Idles now take the
next tracked seq and sit in the retransmit buffer like any other packet.
The 0x26 01 copy was fire-and-forget, and a real 7760's sub VFO kept
yesterday's mode with nothing to show why — refused, or sent with a stale
mode byte. The mode is read first when unknown, and both outcomes are
logged.
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.
The first attempt sent it only after CI-V answered — but the waveform flood
is what stops CI-V answering, so a rig wedged streaming never received its
cure. It now goes out at the end of Connect, before anything waits on a
reply: an unanswered set costs one frame, and the rig acts on what it decodes
whether or not we hear the acknowledgement.
The 0x27 output flag lives in the RADIO and survives our sessions: a scope
enabled by an older build (or another program) kept flooding every new
session with 700-byte frames — and on the IC-7760 that flood is what kills
the CI-V link. One 'waveform output off' as soon as the rig answers, once per
session; the front-panel display is deliberately untouched.
The voice keyer and the live microphone each numbered their packets from 1.
A message played after a talk session re-used sequence numbers the rig had
already seen and was discarded wholesale: the PTT keyed for the full length
of the message and none of it was modulated. PlayTX now feeds the same framer
and counters as the microphone.
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.
A radio in standby is silent on CI-V by design; only the transport chats.
The quiet-recovery added for the mid-session deafness treated that silence
as the fault it usually is and tore the session down every 15 s — taking the
console and its ON button with it, so a radio that was off when OpsLog
started could never be turned on. The recovery now arms only once the
session has heard at least one CI-V payload.
The sink — decode + recorder feed — was built only on the success path of
starting the monitor, so speakers-off (the remembered preference) or an
output device that failed to open silently disabled the WHOLE stream: the
session connected audio=false, and a ticked RX-audio checkbox did nothing.
The sink now exists whenever the stream is on; only the monitor obeys the
speaker choice.
'Monitor already running' surfaced as the speakers checkbox unticking itself
the instant it was ticked, whenever the UI's idea of the state and the real
monitor had drifted apart. Stop-then-start makes the button mean what it
says.
The TX-audio entry points type-assert the transport; a nil port failed the
assertion and produced the sound-card message, sending an operator whose
radio was simply off — or on a new DHCP address — hunting through audio
devices.
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.
The talk button learns the network road the voice keyer already took: when
To-radio is the radio itself, the microphone is captured and re-framed into
the rig's 320-sample packets, the capture callback serving as the clock — the
mic delivers in real time, so no ring and no pacer. Counters and the frame
remainder live on the audio stream, so a talk session spans calls. PTT keys
before and releases after, through the same code as the USB path.
With this, a network Icom is a complete remote station over three UDP ports:
RX audio to the headset, live voice and recorded messages back, CW through
the rig's keyer, CAT for everything else.
AudioStartMonitor refused before reaching the network branch when From-radio
was empty — which is the NORMAL network setup, so the new speakers checkbox
un-ticked itself the instant it was ticked. The capture-device requirement now
applies only to the USB path that actually captures.
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 RX stream and the speakers were welded together: every reconnect and
every launch restarted the monitor, so an operator sitting in the room with
the radio could not have the stream (which the recorder and the voice keyer
need) without also hearing it twice. Stop listening now persists, the Listen
button turns it back on, and reconnects respect the choice.
The audio session opens its TX side alongside RX (txenable in the conninfo,
16 kHz both ways), the stream gains a paced sender — 320 samples every 20 ms,
the frame mirroring what the rig itself sends on this socket, IDs swapped —
and the network Icom takes the same NetworkPlayer slot a TCI radio does: pick
'Radio (network audio)' as the To-radio device and the voice keyer needs no
cable and no virtual sound card. PTT brackets the message through the same
code as every other audio path.
The capture shows the spiral: a session goes deaf on CI-V (28 unanswered
commands, transport alive), the fast-fail rebuilds it, the new session answers
for one second — one state read got through — and is then strangled when the
rig purges the half-open old one. Twenty seconds a lap, no audio throughout,
and only the third or fourth session survives. When the previous session died
less than 90 s after connecting, the redial now pauses 20 s so the purge
happens BEFORE the new session, not on top of it. A long-lived session still
reconnects immediately.
The operator's counter-hypothesis deserves an answer: RS-BA1 shows no such
dropouts, so are we sure the rig stops answering — or do we stop asking? The
quiet log now carries the number of CI-V commands sent since the last answer.
Zero would convict our own poll loop; a healthy count convicts the rig.
rouggy