70 ‐ Tips & Tricks and Known Issues
Warning
After some unfortunate incidents by users I'm going to put this warning and disclaimer up. DO NOT attempt to transmit without the proper precautions in place. Transmitting 5W of RF energy centimetres away from a PC can LITERALLY destroy it, it's almost like an EMP at that distance.
Get your antenna away from the PC by using an external antenna
Although I try to minimize config conflicts between versions, it is possible that a configuration setting from an older version causes problems with a newer version. This can cause any number of random issues that it's IMPOSSIBLE to replicate or narrow down.
Please, before reporting issues or bugs, run the Dock from a clean state. To do this, make sure the Dock is NOT running, go to your windows user Documents folder, in there you will see a folder called "QuanshengDock", this folder contains all your saved settings, presets etc... Either rename this folder or delete it. Then start the Dock again, you will probably have to set the serial port up again.
Also make sure to quote the version you are running. If you are running an older version than the latest release, then update as the issue may have been addressed.
Now see if the same problem exists as before. Only then should you report it. Bug reports should ALWAYS be reported from this clean state, including the steps required to replicate the issue FROM THE CLEAN STATE.
A future release will have a "Return to factory defaults" option in the settings for this purpose.
If upgrading from a version before 0.27.3q the new version will likely have HUGE text on the LCD screen. This is because I had to change the way the "F Stretch" feature worked. If this happens open up your settings and change "F Stretch" to a value around 0.20
It's impossible for (external) PTT to work with the XVFO, the reason is because the physical PTT switch cuts off the serial RX data and that is required for the XVFO to function. The only way to transmit in XVFO is with the PTT button on-screen or with space-bar. Basically, software PTT only. That's just a physical limitation of the radio itself.
This is caused by Radio control communication between radio and PC via the programming interface
Solution is to STOP the communication
- Change Menu 60.
Remoteto OFF - Now Chirp can be used.
- When ready, switch ON 60.
remoteor Power-Off and -On (Remoteis default ON after power-up)
Note
This project does NOT work with actual version CHIRP
There is a cause and reason for the Chirp-mismatch
But that's not up to this project
There are 2 workarounds
- Temporarily use different firmware on your radio that matches the Chirp and adjust your channels
- Use an earlier version of Chirp PY driver in Developer mode
Note
Almost all TX problems are going to be down to RF energy from the radio clobbering your PC, your programming cable or any related hardware. The majority are issues with the programming cable, it gets hammered by RFi and either starts sending garbage data to and from the radio or cuts out altogether leaving the software in a state where it is no longer controlling it which both cause all sorts of random events. Info on Wikipedia about radio-frequency interference (RFI)
- so you can easily connect the external antenna cable to the radio
- extra option is to extend that to PL256 with this adapter
An other suggestion is this converter cable
It imports from the channel editor on the main interface.
-
Use the channel editor as normal to read the radio or load from a saved channel file. Then go to the XVFO and select
Allto pull all your channels from the Channel Editor into the XVFO -
Updateis used to compare the channels in the XVFO against the ones in the Channel Editor and apply any differences.