It's all about the Software

Having finally got round to finding where it is located I have to say this is a real game changer for checking for DX in the FM band. It took just over 3 minutes to load 5 hours worth of files at 1 line/sec resolution which can then be rapidly scrolled through looking for the DX.

However I have two requests:
1. Can we have a bit more resolution time-wise, 1 line/sec is good for SpE, but one can't see shorter meteor bursts. Adding 0.2 lines/second , and 0.5 lines/second would make them visible.
2. Can it be arranged that left-clicking the mouse on the playback waterfall takes you to the time and frequency (or double-left click). Currently it just takes you to the time, and you have to go to the main window (spectrum or waterfall) to select the frequency which isn't convenient as I have the Main Window on one monitor and an expanded Playback waterfall on the other monitor.

As an suggestion - is it possible that the start and end time can be specified before the file is loaded. At present, you can only specify the start and end times, which applies just to the playback time within the full recording, after loading. So if you have a long file that you want maximum resolution for may be too large. I'm not sure what would happen as the maximum continuous run of files is 5 hours and needed 18,800 lines at 1 line/sec.

However not having the above is by no means a show-stopper and if you are into FMDX and you've not tried this - you must!

DaveB wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 3:59 pm

As an suggestion - is it possible that the start and end time can be specified before the file is loaded. At present, you can only specify the start and end times, which applies just to the playback time within the full recording, after loading. So if you have a long file that you want maximum resolution for may be too large. I'm not sure what would happen as the maximum continuous run of files is 5 hours and needed 18,800 lines at 1 line/sec.

However not having the above is by no means a show-stopper and if you are into FMDX and you've not tried this - you must!

Hi Dave,

You can already do this - in the Navigator window, click the "calendar" icon just to the left of the circular arrows and you can specify your pair of times.

Agree it would be good to user-select a better level of resolution on the bitmap, as long as it came with a health warning that there would be a trade-off with speed. Don't know how easy that would be to code, though.

Hi Jim,
The problem with the calendar icon is that it is only active after you load the whole file, and although it plays back the selected portion the whole file is still downloaded. I wanted to just be able to load a section.
As for the better resolution - I would hope it isn't too difficult to code as there are options from 1, 2, 5 all the way to 1 line every 60 seconds.

By 'resolution' I mean how fine the waterfall is. It's quite coarse, the increased line count by reducing the number of lines per second just spreads the coarseness out, if that makes sense.

I've experimented, and you can't select a segment of the recording (time-wise) to display on the bitmap, you can only zoom in bandwidth wise (Layout, Bandwidth and from the choice of "Full" and "Display", clicking "Display".

The answer might be using the Recording Scheduler to record shorter files, or using the Datafile Editor to pull out segments of a long recording to make shorter recordings to look at.

One thing I have found with the bitmap on Band 2 is that the very strong signals from Rowridge spread quite badly visually because of the low resolution, so the lower half of the band in particular is less useful for spotting Es unless it's a fairly strong opening - weaker signals will get visually "drowned" out.

This is where having the choice of normal (low) resolution and the fastest bitmap construction, and a higher resolution (perhaps 2 and 4x the normal lowest) and accepting it will take that bit longer to construct, would be useful, without having to go the whole hog with Analyser which takes f o r e v e r with wide bandwidth files.

I've been playing with this feature for a couple of days getting ready for the Es season so here's my two pennies' worth. What a great addition to the programme, it makes Console so much more usable mid Es opening. I've noticed on my set up that the waterfall display values during live reception and playback are too high for the navigator waterfall making everything looked washed out. To get the 'NW' to resemble a live waterfall I shift the vertical bar on the right side up to reduce the NW display to look about right then up the data playback gain by 15dB. The easiest workaround is to have to instances of Console running, one for live/recording and one for playback.

This is how it looks 'out of the box' This after the display adjustments. I was going to mention the horizontal banding either side of strong signals but it seems Jim has covered this one and I agree that an option of a better resolution would be good.

I've two requests for this that I think would be useful, one is to add a 0.5s option (or both that and 0.25s) to the options, this would make meteor scatter easier to spot. I appreciate both that and the resolution add load times but they do give greater flexibility to its usage.

Finally, my biggest wish is to add frequency changing to the Navigator Waterfall so it can a complete click and listen without having to switch between windows.

Paul
G7PUV

G9PUV
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