Yes, WIN 7.
Think I have it working a bit. I can actually read the text when I move the cursor to a signal on the waterfall. However, I do not yet have my macros set up.
And so, when I attempted to respond to a CQ on 20M by typing and then hitting the TX button. It sent, but it seemed forever for the radio to stop transmitting. Have to figure that one out.
If you hit the TX button, DigiPan will put your transmitter in the transmit mode and start transmitting, even if you have nothing in the transmit window. PSK31 is a amplitude- and phase-modulated waveform that is continuous. This means that, even though there are no characters to encode, you will be transmitting at full output power. You can often see this in the waterfall when the transmitting station forgets to put a <RX> command at the end of their macro. In the waterfall it looks like railroad tracks, with nothing in between. Effectively, the transmitter is just idling, waiting for characters to encode.
This is common to see with new PSK31 users. You know that, in the background, they are scrambling around trying to figure out how to turn off transmit.
This is also one of the reasons for keeping your output power low (20-25W). Some transmitters my overheat on long transmissions, if you run full power. PSK31 is very efficient and narrow banded, making it suitable for low-power and crowded-band operation.
The multi-channel decoding seem to type gibberish on many of the lines. But, where there was a visible signal, it decoded well.
Did not recognize many PSK signals on my waterfall and one of them was about 2" wide.
Looks fun though. I'll get back to it soon (like tomorrow, hopefully).
Thanks and 73
Jeff
KE8APS
I'll keep playing at it and hopefully get it fully figured out.
If you want to see a lot of signals, probably 20 meters is the best band. On the other bands you just have to wait for the propagation to be good. When propagation is good, 15 meters will get you a lot of DX.
Yes, you can get a lot of gibberish in the multi-channel window. If you get too much, you might want to reduce the audio from your transceiver or set the "Squelch Threshold" higher, under "Options".
A nice feature is being able to configure the Multichannel entries to change color, based on the content of the entry. You can access the settings under "Configure/Colors/Multichannel Coloring Effect". I have mine set to turn the entry Green if a CQ is detected. If my call sign is in one of the entries, it means someone is calling me and turns the line background to Orange.
Saying that a signal is 2" wide doesn't tell me much. I don't know what kind of display device you are using. It's usually better to specify the width in KHz, which can be read right off the waterfall display.
A signal can be wide for a variety of reasons. The most common reason is that it is not a PSK31 signal. It could be a PSK63 or a PSK128 signal. All are perfectly legal to use. But when you are in the PSK31 mode, you won't be able to decode them. A wide signal can also be created by driving your transmitter too hard. Too much input signal may cause distortion that shows up as extra sidebands. A signal that overloads your receiver can also look very wide.
Martin - K7MEM
