Sunday, October 11, 2015

Retrying mixW with mixed feelings

It has been years ago that Bernard PB7Z and I started with contesting. I immidiatly sticked to HRD and DM780 and Bernard was more into mixW. Now Bernard is one of the most active contesters in the Netherlands. And even with a vertical on groundlevel he still obtains nice scores and DX. I had a lot of troubles lately with RTTY on N1MM+ and told Bernard I would like to take a look at mixW again to see if I could get used to it. So, I got mixW 2.16 from him as he use it himself with good results all these years. At first I think mixW has a lot of features but it is not always clear how to find it (how to make a cabrillio file for example). Setup is a struggle, if you can get it to work fast you're lucky. After asking Bernard (in the middle of the Makrothen RTTY contest, sorry Bernard!) a few times I got the program working with at least CAT control. But now I wanted to take part in the contest....no way I could get a contest setup from the program. I can only make a setup by hand. And although I tried to get the most updated contest.dll into the plugin directory mixW couldn't find anything at all. Searching on the internet they suggest I should try the hidden directory "appdata" and find mixW in there to add the dll into the plugin dir. But no way I could find a mixW dir there. Oh my! Have been searching and trying for a solution but can't find it. Very bad for a program that you have to pay for, and yes I know I should have trying the newest version. And yes, I probabely try it later. But as Bernard is working with this version for years already why isn't it working for me? I don't know. The result after setting up everything by hand was 1 QSO on 80m in the Makrothen contest. And yes, I found features in mixW I like. It is the automatic grabbing of the serialnumber and the display of the call under their signal. What I still miss is the audio history I like in DM780 and FLdigi. I probabely will try mixW again as I know now how to set it up. But for serious contesting I'll better stick to N1MM+. For normal use I still think DM780 is the best....

7 comments:

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hallo Bas, ik doe niets aan contesten eigenlijk, maar heb MixW ooit geïnstalleerd (heb een CD-tje liggen) maar ik vond het niet fijn, al die losse schermpjes. Gauw er weer afgegooid. Trouwens de nieuwste versie van Fldigi kan al aardig goed CW decoderen, viel me toevallig op op. Hoewel niet zo goed als CWskimmer. 73 Paul

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Paul, dat van die losse schermpjes vind ik wel meevallen. Dan is N1MM+ nog erger. CWskimmer krig ik hier op geen enkele computer geïnstalleerd. Heel erg jammer. Misschien als je hem koopt dat er dan ondersteuning is....FLdigi kan inderdaad prima CW decoderen maar het word moeilijker als het signaal zwakker is. 73, Bas

Peter pa4o said...

Tja... :-)

Bert, PA1B said...

Hallo Bas, juist in de contest, moet het "fLeckuhlo0s"werken.
Ik heb wel eens een verkeerde funktietoets in gedrukt, tijdens de contest.
Na minuten lang zoeken en lezen in het Manual ben ik er gelukkig uitgekomen. hi.
73, Bert

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hallo Bert, ja vlekkeloos als het programma doet wat het doen moet. Als je allerlei vreemde problemen krijgt houd het gauw op. Het enige programma wat bij mij nog nooit problemen gaf is DM780. Maar dat is ongeschikt voor contesten. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Tja, ook wel eens mixW geprobeerd Peter? Of werkt N1MM+ bij jou zonder problemen? 73, Bas

Peter pa4o said...

Ja, ik heb hier totaal geen problemen met N1MM in alle modes niet.
MixW heb ik wel eens geprobeerd maar ik hou het bij het contest programma.

Peter