Received flag: new APP_OPSLOG_QSL_RCVD extra, toggled on the QSO edit window
next to QSL Message (immediate targeted write via SetOpsLogQSLReceived so it sets
AND clears reliably), plus a live PSE QSL / TNX indicator and a Recent-QSOs
column mirroring the sent one.
PSE/TNX card stamp: automatic — received → TNX, otherwise PSE QSL — exposed as
the {qso.pse_tnx} token (added to qslVars, so preview and send agree) and placed
in the default QSO-box footer; it can be moved to its own element in the designer.
Default QSL message: new qsl.default_message (QSLEmailTemplates.DefaultMessage),
edited under Settings → E-mail → QSL card e-mail. qslVars falls back to it when
the QSO's own QSLMSG is empty, so a per-QSO message always wins. Single choke
point covers both live preview and send.
New BackupSettings.EveryExit (keyBackupEveryExit) with a Settings → Backup
checkbox. When on, the three shutdown-backup gates (plannedShutdownSteps,
runBackupForShutdown, maybeShutdownBackup) bypass the HasBackupToday /
HasADIFBackupToday "already done today" check and always run, so a second
session's QSOs are captured instead of skipped until the next day. The dated
backup file for today is refreshed (overwritten) each exit; prior days are still
kept by rotation.
The recording e-mail's subject and body round-tripped through EmailSettings and
the backend (keyEmailSubject/keyEmailBody) but had no UI editor — only the QSL
card e-mail did, so the recording mail was stuck on the default text. Add the
same subject/body editor to the E-mail panel, above the QSL block, sharing the
{CALL}/{DATE}/{BAND}/{MODE}/{MYCALL} template variables.
New per-profile "tracked awards" selection: Settings → Awards (under User
configuration) is a two-column transfer list — every defined award on the left,
the ones you follow on the right, click to move either way. The Awards tab's
list is narrowed to the followed set; an empty set means "show them all" so the
tab is never blank.
Backend: app_awards_tracked.go adds keyAwardsTracked (per-profile JSON array of
award codes) with GetTrackedAwards/SaveTrackedAwards; saving emits
awards:tracked-changed so the Awards tab re-filters live. Award definitions stay
global — only the follow selection is per profile.
A contiguous FreqMin/FreqMax range can't drop a single band while keeping its
neighbours — so it couldn't express "40 m and 20 m yes, 30 m no" for an antenna
whose 30 m extension isn't fitted. Replace it with a Covered bands selector
(40 m–6 m) that applies to both the Ultrabeam and the SteppIR.
The follow loop and immediate re-tune now gate on band membership
(motorBandAllowed) instead of a MHz range: only bands in the operator's set are
followed, and 80 m/160 m are never followed (outside a beam's reach) regardless.
The legacy FreqMin/FreqMax is migrated to a band set on load and still
round-trips, so existing configs are unchanged. UI swaps the two number inputs
for a row of toggle chips.
The follow logic skips out-of-range frequencies only when it knows BOTH edges
of the antenna's range. The Ultrabeam path took those edges from the
controller's status frame, but an RCU-01 behind an RS232-to-Ethernet bridge
answers with the short frame that omits FreqMax → the guard saw FreqMax==0 and
disabled itself → OpsLog forwarded every rig frequency, so 80 m (un-tunable)
reached the controller, which clamped the elements down to its lowest band
(~30 m).
ubAdapter now carries the operator-configured FreqMin/FreqMax from Settings →
Antenna (like steppirAdapter already did) and uses them as a hard floor/ceiling,
falling back to the controller-reported bound only when one is left unset. This
guarantees both bounds are present so the guard actually engages. The Tunable
range editor in the Antenna panel, previously SteppIR-only, is now shown for the
Ultrabeam too, with a generic bilingual hint.
New internal/rotator/dcu1 client speaking the DCU-1 command set (AP1nnn / AM1
to go-to, AI1 to read bearing), over a serial COM port (4800 baud default) or a
raw TCP serial-over-IP bridge. Azimuth-only; Stop re-commands the current
bearing since the base set has no stop opcode.
Wired through app.go (normRotorType, default port 4001, GoTo/Heading/Stop/test
switches, park returns the same "PstRotator only" note as ARCO) and exposed in
the rotor settings as "Hy-Gain DCU-1 (RotorCard DXA, Rotor-EZ, Green Heron)"
with the ARCO's serial/TCP transport chooser and a bilingual hint. Protocol is
implemented from the standard DCU-1 spec and still needs field confirmation
against a real RotorCard DXA.
Network relay boards (WebSwitch/KMTronic/Dingtian) were always reached at
http://<host>, so a board on the LAN behind a reverse proxy — the common remote
setup where the operator's 80/443 already go to Nginx Proxy Manager — couldn't be
reached from outside. relayBase() now keeps a scheme the operator supplies
(https://relay.example.com, optional sub-path) and only defaults to http:// for a
bare host/host:port. UI hint + test added.
New DX Cluster setting (Settings → DX Cluster). Off (today's behaviour) a call
worked anywhere reads as already worked; on, the WORKED-call flag needs the same
band AND mode. It folds through the digital-mode grouping (Settings → General):
grouped, a 20m FT8 contact also marks a 20m FT4 spot worked; ungrouped they are
separate slots. Backend: qso.WorkedCallSlotKeys builds CALL|band and
CALL|band|mode(grouped) keys; ClusterSpotStatuses uses them when the option is on
(a spot with no inferable mode falls back to same-band).
Five operator-requested items:
- Alt+W clears the QSO entry. Handled before the `typing` guard and above
the keyer's key routing, so there is always one key that clears whatever
else is running — Esc is not that key when the CW keyer reserves it.
- The Grid box no longer pops outside the entry panel on a narrow window.
Row 2 needed 300+130+76+gaps = 538 px inside a panel whose min-width is
520, so Grid was pushed out and clipped at every narrow width, not just
extreme ones. QTH's min-width drops to 80 and the row wraps rather than
overflowing if it ever still can't fit.
- Selecting a QSO in the log now drives the Stats (F1) matrix. Uses its own
WorkedBefore call into separate state, NOT runWorkedBefore: that one owns
the entry form's wbRef and can trigger a field backfill, which browsing
the log must never do. The entry form wins whenever it holds a call.
- Clicking a coloured band/mode square lists the contacts behind it. Returns
the exact callsign AND the rest of the entity, because that pair is what
the cell's colour encodes; the call's own QSOs are bolded. The DXCC arm
matches the stored dxcc column only — reconstructing it from the callsign
here would disagree with the matrix above, which is built from that column.
- The Awards DXCC list shows each entity's primary prefix in its own sortable
column. Derived live from cty.dat into Ref.Group rather than stored on the
reference row, so an existing installation needs no re-seed.
Removed the long explanatory hints under the Kenwood COM/baud/host, data-mode,
CAT-trace and PTT-hotkey fields; shortened the CAT-sharing hint to just the
client setup line; and replaced the DTR/RTS hint with a one-liner. Less clutter
in the CAT settings.
No single Kenwood mode digit fits every rig for a data mode: a K3/K4 wants
DATA (MD6), a TS-590SG/TS-990S data mode is a USB modifier set on the rig,
and MD6 on a plain Kenwood is FSK/RTTY. So the operator now chooses in
Settings → CAT: USB (default), DATA (MD6), or leave the rig's mode unchanged.
Only soundcard/data modes (FT8, PSK, JT…) follow this; RTTY/FSK stays its own
native mode, and voice/CW are untouched (isKenwoodDataMode + test).
- PGXL: remote AUTH password; direct-link meter fallback (VITA-first) with
250 ms poll + peak-hold; fan mode uses bare "fanmode=" (was ignored).
- TCI: spot colour sent as decimal ARGB (ExpertSDR dropped the hex string);
spot click handled via CLICKED_ON_SPOT / RX_CLICKED_ON_SPOT to fill the entry.
- FlexRadio: clicking an OpsLog spot on the panadapter now applies the mode too.
- Filter presets: the trash icon deletes again (Radix pointer-down intercept).
- PTT hotkey: keys over CAT when a backend is active (was hijacked by a stale
Audio-tab RTS/DTR serial setting); AltGr keys allowed; presses logged.
- CW macro <LOGQSO>: logs after the preceding CW is sent, not on the first letter.
Settings -> Rotator is now a list like the amplifiers: add/remove rotors,
mix PstRotator / Rotator Genius / ARCO, and a Rotator Genius can drive both
its ports (one entry = two rotors). The compass gains a rotor selector, and
a per-rotor motorized-antenna flag so the boom/pattern paths show only for
the rotor carrying the Ultrabeam/SteppIR.
Also in this batch: a keyboard PTT hotkey (hold-to-talk or toggle, reusing
the audio PTT method with a CAT fallback), and TCI spot push to the
panadapter with click-to-fill of the callsign.
Both defaults break someone. 0.22.7 lowered the lines on Yaesu and
Kenwood and silenced a TS-990 whose interface needs RTS raised to
transmit; 0.22.8 stopped lowering them and an FT8 station reported its
output power wandering, cured by closing OpsLog — Windows raises both on
open and the interface reads one as PTT.
So it is now a checkbox on those two backends, off by default: that is
how they behaved before any of this. Xiegu keeps lowering them
unconditionally (its own report, its own explicit keying setting), and
the CI-V backend keeps the behaviour it has always had.
The Main tab was a fixed 50/50 grid, but a map and a cluster list want
very different widths and which one deserves the room changes with what
the operator is doing.
The share is clamped to 15..85: a pane can be made small but never
dragged out of existence, because recovering from that would mean
grabbing a divider no longer on screen. Double-click restores even.
The drag uses pointer capture on the divider — without it Leaflet
swallows the moves as soon as the cursor crosses the map. Persisted
through writeUiPref, so it travels with data/ like the other UI prefs.
The cluster already answers this question for a spot; the entry panel did
not answer it for the station actually being worked. A county hunter
needs to know before the QSO ends — by the time the county shows up in
the awards table the station is long gone.
qso.CountyWorked asks about one county instead of loading the whole
worked set, narrowed to the state so it stays a few dozen rows on a
remote MySQL. It compares through award.USCountyKey on both sides rather
than in SQL, because logged spellings vary ("Los Angeles" against
"LOS ANGELES, CA") and that key function is what resolves it everywhere
else.
An empty or non-US county is not "new" but unknown, and shows nothing: a
badge on a guess is worse than no badge.
At two grid columns the labels wrapped onto a second line, which set the
row height for everything beside them. The unit is obvious from the
neighbouring DXCC # field and the numbers themselves.
The refusal to guess was only visible in the award editor's test tab and
in the awards table — both of them places an operator goes long after the
contact is over. It has to appear while the station is still in front of
you, so ComputeQSOAwardRefs now reports the candidates it declined to
assign and the F3 panel lists them as buttons: click one and it is
written to award_refs, replacing any sibling picked for that award.
They are never auto-added — adding one would be exactly the guess the
setting exists to refuse.
Also: the dark-theme fix for the native calendar glyph named only
input[type=date], so date-time fields kept an invisible icon. All the
temporal input types now share the rule.
Two DARC DOKs are both called "Gießen" — two clubs share the town. Exact
matching finds both and both are right as far as the matcher can tell, so
it kept both and the operator got a QSO credited to a DOK that may well
have been the other one.
Picking one is not an option: it writes a reference into the log with no
evidence behind it. So a Def can now be marked one reference per QSO, and
an ambiguous match on such an award assigns none, names the candidates in
the trace and leaves the contact under missing references — where the
operator's choice now sticks (06e3437).
Off by default, and deliberately NOT a revival of the old `Multi` flag: a
field holding several references (an n-fer POTA activation, a VUCC grid
line) is several references, correctly, and stays that way.
Reported on a Xiegu G90. With the blue programming cable — three wires, no
modem lines — CAT works perfectly. Behind a DE-19, which carries audio, CAT and
PTT, the radio went into transmit the moment OpsLog connected and stayed there.
Windows raises DTR and RTS when a serial port is opened, and the DE-19 reads
them as PTT; Xiegu's own documentation asks for both low. The CI-V backend has
dropped them since it was written, for the same reason on Icom rigs with USB
SEND mapped to a line. Xiegu, Yaesu and Kenwood did not. They do now.
The second half of the report: WSJT-X through OpsLog's rigctld decoded fine and
never transmitted. Nothing was broken in that chain — set_ptt reaches the
backend, which sends the CI-V PTT command, which a G90 ignores. That is why
Xiegu keys on a hardware line instead. The backend can now do that: Settings →
CAT → Xiegu → how the rig is keyed (CI-V / RTS / DTR).
Untested here — no G90 in reach. The operator who reported it offered to try.
A panadapter shot settles it: answering an S5 station, the replayed recording
goes out several times wider and taller than the station being answered — in WAV
as well as MP3, so this is not the encoder.
One setting served two sources that have nothing in common. A voice-keyer
message is a microphone at speaking distance and legitimately wants 195%; a QSO
recording is a receiver's line output, which is far hotter. The same 195% put it
into the transmitter flat out, ALC pinned, noise and voice alike.
The QSO playback now has its own level, defaulting to 100%. The voice keyer
keeps the setting it had, so nobody's F-key messages change.
A second press restarted the message from the beginning. What the operator wants
there is to cut it short — enough heard, or pressed by mistake with the
transmitter keyed — and then to be able to send it again at once.
It now shows a stop square while playing and releases the PTT through the same
path the natural end uses, so nothing is left keyed. Together with the device
handover fixed a moment ago, sending again immediately afterwards works.
All / CW / Phone / Digital, stacked on top of the worked/confirmed filter. The
question an operator actually has — which DXCC entities have I worked on CW but
not confirmed on CW — needs both at once; answering only one of them is what
sends people to a spreadsheet.
References carried bands but not modes, so the award computation now aggregates
mode CLASSES per reference, worked and confirmed separately. Classes, not ADIF
modes: nobody chasing CW cares whether the digital side was FT8 or RTTY, and a
list of twenty mode names would not answer the question. An unrecognised mode
counts as data rather than as nothing, so a new digital mode does not vanish
from the filter the day it appears.
Two rules the filter needs to be honest:
- Not-confirmed means not confirmed ON THIS MODE. An entity worked on CW and
confirmed on SSB is still a CW entity to chase, and that is exactly what the
filter is for.
- "Not worked" plus a mode is a contradiction — an unworked reference has no
mode — so the mode filter stands aside there instead of emptying the list.
The backend honours the setting: it normalises the log side and the spot's own
mode through the same grouper, so an FT4 spot on a band worked in FT8 reads as
worked. That was not the fault.
Spot statuses are cached per call+band+mode and the cache never expired. Ticking
the box in Settings therefore changed nothing on screen — every spot already
listed kept the answer to the old question, and only new arrivals were judged by
the new rule. The cache is now dropped when settings are saved.
Also: writeUiPref swallowed a failed database write. The interface kept working
from localStorage while the BACKEND — which reads some of these keys, this one
among them — still saw the old value. The two disagreeing in silence is exactly
the shape of this bug, so the failure is now logged.
Antennas and power were two tables listing the same bands, one under the other,
so configuring a band meant matching rows by eye between them.
They are now one row per band. That the two settings are stored separately and
applied on different triggers — antennas on band change, power on band or mode
change — is a backend detail, and no reason to split what is a single decision
per band for the person configuring it. A rule in the header keeps the two
groups readable.
Settings → FlexRadio, beside the per-band antennas and applied the same way:
when the band or the mode changes. 1.5 kW that is fine on SSB has no business
going into an FT8 signal on the same band.
Three classes rather than one row per mode, because what decides the power is
duty cycle and what the amplifier will take of it, not the mode's name — FT8 and
RTTY punish an amplifier the same way, SSB and AM do not. The classification is
pinned by a test: a digital mode sorted as phone would deliver exactly the
1.5 kW this exists to prevent.
An empty box means "leave the power alone", never zero watts, and an unknown
mode changes nothing — setting a transmit power from a name we do not recognise
is not a good guess.
Unlike the antennas, a locked band does not skip it: the lock means "do not let
the rig drag my log entry around", not "let the amplifier keep whatever the last
mode left".
Settings → General, beside the language. An operator reading 2026-07-30 as the
7th of the 30th month is reading their own log wrongly, and that is a display
problem.
Storage stays ISO/ADIF, deliberately and permanently: it is what ADIF
specifies, it sorts correctly as text, and a stored format that followed a UI
preference would make the log unreadable the day the preference changed. Exports
and uploads are untouched.
Two details that decide whether it actually works:
- The columns are rebuilt when the format changes. The formatters are captured
inside AG-Grid's column definitions, so nothing else would notice and the
table would keep the old format until something forced a rebuild.
- main.tsx re-reads the choice after the portable prefs are pulled from the
database. The module reads localStorage at import time, which is BEFORE that
sync — so a copied data/ folder would have shown ISO until the next launch.
UTC is not part of the choice and never will be: a logbook is kept in UTC, and
showing local time would make the display disagree with the QSO's own record
twice a year.
Y green, N red, R blue — colour only, no pill or badge. These columns sit among
callsigns and dates, and a row of coloured boxes would shout louder than the
callsign it belongs to.
Twelve columns: paper QSL, LoTW, eQSL, Club Log, HRDLog, QRZ.com both ways, and
OpsLog's own card and recording flags. All four views the operator named —
recent QSOs, worked before, NET Control, QSL manager — turn out to share this
one grid, so they are all covered by construction rather than by four edits that
could drift.
Semantic tokens rather than fixed colours, so the four themes follow and the
contrast stays right on the light ones. ADIF's I (ignore) is deliberately left
in the default ink: it is neither good news nor bad, and colouring it would put
it in one camp or the other.
Says what the switch does, then names the one limit that changes the decision.
Drops my "no undo" line: deleting a QSO is already understood to be permanent,
and repeating it reads as a warning about the checkbox rather than the QSO.
Four sentences of API behaviour under a checkbox. Two facts actually change the
operator's decision: it cannot be undone, and QRZ.com cannot reach QSOs uploaded
before OpsLog started keeping their record number.
The rest — how Club Log matches, that the local delete happens regardless, that
the log records each answer — is true, and belongs in the log and the code where
it already is. Documentation in a checkbox hint is documentation nobody reads.
Opt-in, off by default: neither service can undo it, and a local delete is not
always a statement about the world — a duplicate cleared out of a contest log
was never meant to change the DX's log.
The two APIs are not alike, and the difference decides what is possible:
- Club Log deletes by MATCH (callsign, exact timestamp, band number), so it
works for every QSO in the log, past or future. The band table is its own
list and is pinned by a test: a band mapped to the wrong number does not
fail, it points the delete at a different QSO.
- QRZ.com deletes ONLY by logid. So markExtUploaded now stores the LOGID it
already received on every upload — it was being logged and thrown away. A
QSO uploaded before this cannot be withdrawn from here at all, and the log
says so by name rather than leaving the operator to assume it worked.
Both run BEFORE the local delete, because both need the QSO's own fields to
find their copy and there is nothing left to ask with once the row is gone.
Neither can block it: the operator asked for the QSO to go, and a refusing
website is not a reason to keep it.
The sort choice is now written through writeUiPref and both keys are registered
as portable, so they travel with a copied data/ folder like every other UI
preference.
Registering them is the part that matters: writeUiPref stores to the DB, but
only keys on the portable list are read BACK at startup. A key written and never
restored looks exactly like one that was never saved — which is what would have
happened here.
The grey-line toggle had the same gap. It called writeUiPref from the day it was
written but was never added to the list, so it came back off on the next launch.
Found while adding the award keys beside it.
The situation, in the operator's words: working VP2MAA, recording, and he asks
to hear his own signal. So: stop, play, and the recording is still saved with
the QSO.
Stopping FREEZES the take rather than ending it — nothing more is captured,
nothing is discarded, and logging writes the file exactly as before. Playback
reuses the voice keyer's path: same output device, same PTT keying and release
with its generation guard, so a replay cannot be cut short by a stale unkey.
Playing is refused while still recording. The transmitted audio would feed back
into the same take on any rig monitoring its own transmission, and stopping is
one click the operator has already made — it is their statement that the take is
finished, not a hoop.
The elapsed clock freezes with the recording and resumes from where it stopped,
because it now shows the LENGTH OF THE FILE rather than the time since the QSO
began. Only a fresh take returns it to zero.
A red dot in the slot the counter will occupy. Click it and the counter starts,
the dot disappears, and logging the QSO writes the file exactly as an automatic
recording would — the save path already keyed off an active take, not off the
setting.
With automatic recording disabled the capture engine is not idle, it is not
running at all, so a manual take starts it. Two consequences handled here:
- It is released again when the take ends — logged, cancelled, or dropped for
being a digital mode. An operator who records one contact does not expect
their microphone held open for the rest of the session. The release is a
deferred call at the top of the save path so every exit goes through it,
rather than one that has to be remembered at each return.
- There is no pre-roll. An automatic recording opens with the seconds BEFORE
the callsign was typed; a manual one can only begin now. The button's
tooltip says so, because otherwise the difference between two files is a
mystery to the person holding them.
The button only appears where it can work: devices configured, automatic
recording off, and a mode whose audio is worth keeping. That state is asked of
the backend rather than inferred from a preference in the interface, so the two
cannot drift apart, and it is re-read when settings are saved.
The list read "Yaesu (native CAT)", "Kenwood (native)", "FlexRadio / SmartSDR
(native)". Native says how OpsLog is built, which is our business; the operator
opening that menu is answering a different question — how is my radio plugged
in.
So: OmniRig, FlexRadio (API), Yaesu (USB), Kenwood (USB, network), Xiegu (USB),
Icom (CI-V USB), Icom (CI-V network), TCI. Shorter, and each entry now tells
someone with a cable in their hand which line to pick.
The same ASCII stream over a socket instead of a wire: ser2net, an
Ethernet-serial adapter, a Raspberry Pi at the radio. One TCP transport
presented as a serial port, so the backend keeps a single code path.
Explicitly NOT the radio's own RJ45. A TS-890 or TS-990 speaks Kenwood's
KNS/ARCP there — session, authentication, a different protocol — and that needs
one of those radios in hand to write honestly. The setting's help text says so,
because an operator who plugs in their TS-890's Ethernet port and types its
address deserves to learn that from the interface rather than from silence.
Two details that decide whether this is usable or maddening:
- A read deadline expiring is reported as "no data yet", not as an error. It
is exactly what a serial read timeout means to the caller; as an error it
would make ask() abandon a rig that is merely thinking.
- The log line names what was connected to. "connected on @ 0 baud" after a
network connect sends someone hunting a serial fault that does not exist.
The host wins over the COM port when both are filled: it is the more deliberate
setting, and silently preferring the wire leaves someone staring at an address
they typed and a radio that never answers.
Grey line — the day/night terminator and its twilight band, off by default,
redrawn every minute so a map left open all day is not silently wrong by
evening. Its own Leaflet pane below the overlays, non-interactive, so it never
hides the path or beam nor swallows a click.
The solar maths is pure and was checked against known positions before being
wired to anything: both solstices, the March equinox, the subsolar longitude at
12 UTC, and day/night at Paris, Tokyo, New York, Sydney and Reykjavik across
seasons and hemispheres. That last set is what caught the real bug: the equation
has TWO solutions per meridian and the naive branch put New York in daylight at
02:00 in December — the terminator at +63° where it belongs at −63°. A shaded
map that looks entirely plausible and is exactly mirrored. It now anchors on the
classical terminator and takes the branch nearest it, which is also what makes
the twilight band follow the terminator instead of jumping hemisphere.
Separately, from a Xiegu user: the protocol-trace checkbox does not stay ticked.
It is React state initialised to false on every mount, so a trace still running
came back unticked — the operator ticks it to "switch it on", which switches it
OFF, and the log they send contains no trace at all. Worse than a cosmetic bug:
it silently defeats the one tool asked for to diagnose their radio. Both boxes
(CAT and WinKeyer) now read their real state from the backend.
Two faults in the progress bar shipped an hour ago.
It was a modal. A hundred QSOs is a minute; a contest log is two thousand and
ten minutes, and for all of it the operator could do nothing else — while their
radio is on. It is now a card in the corner: same bar, same count, same
callsign, none of the imprisonment.
And the menu said "Update from QRZ.com" while the code has always walked EVERY
configured provider, falling through to HamQTH when QRZ answers not-found. The
label is now "Update from the callsign databases", which is what happens.
Noted while reading that code, NOT fixed here because it trades against the
user's API quota and is their call: this path goes through the lookup cache, so
a second run on the same callsigns re-reads the cache rather than reaching the
provider. The cache comment already argues the opposite for deliberate clicks —
"a lookup the operator asked for by clicking is a deliberate act and must reach
the provider" — and a right-click on a selection is exactly that.
Selecting the 102 contacts of a freshly imported contest log and updating them
from QRZ.com is 102 network round trips. Nothing moved on screen while it ran,
so the only honest reading was that the application had frozen — and the natural
response to that is to kill it, halfway through.
The backend now emits a progress event per QSO and the frontend shows the same
overlay the ADIF import uses: a bar, the count, and the callsign being queried.
The callsign is reported BEFORE the lookup rather than after. With a slow
provider that is the difference between "waiting on F4BPO" and a name that lags
one QSO behind whatever is actually taking the time — which would be the field
someone stares at while deciding whether it is stuck.
The overlay is cleared by the closing event and again in a finally, so neither
a completed run nor a failed one can leave it on screen.
Reported from a Flex in Kenwood CAT mode: frequency read perfectly, split never
appeared. Not every rig speaking this dialect fills IF's split bit.
Rather than guess which column that firmware populates, ask the question that
DEFINES split — is the transmit VFO a different VFO from the receive one — which
is exactly what FR and FT answer, and the same rule the Yaesu backend settled on
after several wrong turns. FR is also trusted over IF for which VFO is in use:
they are asked in the same breath, and a rig vague about the split bit may be
just as vague about the VFO field.
Cost is bounded: a rig that rejects FR/FT answers "?;" once and is never asked
again, so this is two short commands per poll only where it works. Both paths
are tested against the emulator — split found through FR/FT with IF silent, and
IF-reported split still working on a rig that refuses FR/FT without re-asking.
Also extends the CAT wire trace to the Kenwood backend, ASCII quoted so an empty
reply is visible as such: "" and ";" look identical unquoted, and telling them
apart is the whole question when a rig half-supports a command. If this fix is
not the whole story on real hardware, the trace is what will say so.
An operator worked the RSGB IOTA contest in another logger and got back records
carrying <STATE:5>EU005: N1MM-class software stores the received exchange in the
column its contest module uses, not the one ADIF reserves. Imported verbatim,
every QSO gains a US-state field reading "EU005" and the IOTA award sees
nothing — the reference is in the log, just not where anything looks for it.
The import dialog gains optional source → destination rows, prefilled with
STATE → IOTA since that is the case that prompted it. Applied to the RAW record
before conversion, so it works for promoted columns and Extras alike and the
destination is parsed exactly as if the file had carried it there.
Two rules, both from the same principle that the file outranks our guess:
- the source is CLEARED, so a reference does not linger in STATE where it
would show as the contacted station's US state in the grid and every export;
- a destination the file already filled is kept, judged against the record as
it ARRIVED — otherwise the result would depend on Go's map iteration order,
which is deliberately random.
The swap case in the test is what forced that second rule to be stated: "never
overwrite" and "exchange two fields" cannot both hold silently, so a destination
that is itself a mapping source is treated as an explicit swap and nothing else
is overwritten.
Reported on an IC-9100: the MOX button does not transmit, it sets split. The
source sends the PTT command (0x1C 0x00) and nowhere sends the split one (0x0F),
so the discrepancy is between what OpsLog sends and what the rig acts on — and
that link has already been shown, in the same operator's log, to lose frame sync.
Rather than guess from the command table, this adds what settled the WinKeyer
bug in one line: the actual bytes. Settings → CAT → Log the CI-V protocol writes
every frame in both directions as hex. RX is traced BEFORE framing, since the
bytes as they arrived are what reveals a lost boundary — a decoded view would
hide exactly the fault being hunted.
Session-only, like the keyer trace: it is a diagnostic, and a log full of hex
helps nobody who forgot it was on.
I am not claiming a cause yet. The last time I inferred one from a protocol
document rather than from evidence, I inverted a digit and broke the case that
worked.
A sixth CAT backend, talking to a TS-590/890/990/2000 over its serial port with
no OmniRig in between — frequency, mode, VFO, split and PTT. Elecraft K3/K4 and
the "Kenwood" setting on other radios speak the same dialect.
The protocol was not researched from scratch: internal/catemu already ANSWERS
these commands, pretending to be a TS-2000 so an ACOM amplifier follows OpsLog.
The IF frame layout here is read from the same format string catemu emits, so
the two halves of the repository agree by construction — and the test caught my
own fixture being one character short, which is exactly the error that layout
invites.
Design notes worth keeping:
- IF; is the poll. One frame carries frequency, TX state, mode, VFO and split,
so simplex operation costs a single round trip; the other VFO is only asked
for when split is actually on.
- FA/FB take ELEVEN digits here where Yaesu uses nine. That is the likeliest
place to copy the Yaesu backend and be wrong by a factor of a hundred, so it
has its own test.
- Every lesson the Yaesu backend learned the hard way is built in from the
start: replies matched to the command that asked, "?;" remembered so a poll
stops paying a timeout for an unsupported command, the serial handle closed
before reopening, and a rig that answers nothing reported as absent rather
than "connected".
Untested on hardware — I have no Kenwood here. The frame parsing is covered by
tests against catemu's own format.
An ERC (Easy Rotor Control, incl. ERC Mini) emulates Yaesu GS-232A/B, which is
exactly what the backend written for the microHAM ARCO already speaks — azimuth
out (Maaa), azimuth in (C), stop (S), which is the whole of what was asked for.
So this is two small gaps rather than a new backend:
- Serial speed was hardcoded to 9600. An ARCO's virtual COM ignores it, but an
ERC runs at whatever its own configuration sets, and a mismatch reads as a
dead rotator. It is now selectable beside the COM port.
- The entry was called "microHAM ARCO", so an ERC owner would never have found
it. It is named after the PROTOCOL now: "GS-232A controller (microHAM ARCO,
ERC…)".
The help text states the condition plainly in both languages, because it is the
one thing that will otherwise waste an evening: an ERC left on Hy-Gain DCU-1
speaks a different command set and simply will not answer.
Untested on hardware — I have no ERC here, and the GS-232 path itself is proven
on a real ARCO.
rouggy