Having had my shack computer for a while I decided to update it. Well of all who know IT that's a bit of a non starter. The computer then managed to not connect with my rig (an FT950) via the RS232 and no sound connecting to the program (Mix-W). I'd lost sound altogether.
One new sound card, and several hours of messing about I got some of the sound back (the on board sound never came back) coming out of the computer but not in. My head hurt, so I left it and consulted the club's oracle on these things. That's a problem in having two Linux machines at home, you lose your touch with Windows.
As another session of the RSGB 80m Club Championships was approaching fast, the thinking on my feet pointed towards me using Fldigi on my Ubuntu laptop. Enter steep part of learning curve, but now I know the USB to RS232 dondle appears as tty/dev/usb2 ! So standby activated.
Finally, by messing about with the settings, not so nice traces appeared on the screen, and then a twiddle of the spectrum in Mix-W saw finally sense being made. Just to make sure I did nab those Ukrainians on Cyprus for the WPX RTTY contest on 15m. That concluded that session, I didn't deem much about being really worth working and besides the XYL and I were going out for a meal.
Having had an earlier issue with the sending of CW, hence the paddle by the side of the rig, my head hurt too much to find out where the RF feedback was getting into the system. I mean I was only running 10W and it was making something of a noisy mess. Also sick of getting of getting "NR AGN" when machine sending that I resorted to the key.
The next mountain to climb is called easyPAL on both HF and VHF, hopefully soon.
