On 04/12/2017 07:39 a.m., Rich - K1HTV wrote:
A caution to those of us who often bypass the TX1 message (calls & grid) and start with TX2 (Calls and report).
The problem for those of us with compound calls, is that TX1 populates ONLY with OUR own full call - it does not include the other guy's. So the other guy doesn't know if you're responding to HIM rather than someone else. Using TX2 fixes that problem, but...
Another problem (for me) is that if I respond with TX2, which has my abbreviated, U.S. call in it, the other guy often thinks I'm just yet another U.S. station with a 1x2 call sign, and who cares? So they don't answer, not realizing they're being called by a DX station.
So the problem for those of us forced to use compound calls, is which problem is worse. I seem to get more frequent responses with TX2 nowadays so it's what I now use.
When calling a DX station with a complex callsign, when the DX station responds, none of the messages in his transmitted sequences will have YOUR callsign in them. There is no way to know for sure that the DX station is responding to you or another station.
Yup. See the above.
The fix, when calling stations with complex callsigns, is to start with the TX1 message.
Unless you're a DX station forced to use a compound call. See my first paragraph above.
Another note, when using the alternate TX4 (RR73) message, if after you send your "RR73" message the station you are working responds with a TX2 (calls and report) instead of a TX5 (73) message, that indicates that the station is probably using an older version of WSJT-X. I've sent out numerous emails to those who have responded that way when I worked them and almost all have responded, confirming that they were using an older version.
I'm using the current version and have had that happen to me. It certainly happens a lot with other stations, so I don't use the alternate TX4 for that reason.
A more serious problem for us users of compound calls is that the earliest versions of FT8 software doesn't handle compound calls well at all, and will often hang up during auto sequencing. So when this happens, I give the guy four chances to take it out of autosequence and advance manually, but when he fails to do so, I've taken to aborting auto sequence and sending a macro that says UPDATE SOFTWR. I am still having to do that on about one out of every ten Qs I have. On 20m, it's noticeably worse - about one in five. It's why I tend to stick to 15 and 17 when those bands are open.
73, Scott Bidstrup TI3/W7RI ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ wsjt-devel mailing list wsjt-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel
