Maestro CW Bug 7378 Not Fixed?

K1ESE

Looking through the changelog of SmartSDR 3.0.27 it appears that bug #7378 was not fixed.  Is this so?

This bug was that CW from the Maestro over Smartlink was corrupted by timing errors.  The response from the Help Desk when the problem was reported was - 
"Because CW is such a timing critical mode, we perform a test on the Maestro at boot time to calculate the timing characteristics of the keying circuit so that we can compensate for delay and jitter.  We believe a defect has been introduced in SmartSDR v3 that is affecting the quality of determining the timing characteristics.  When you take into account this issue, it becomes compounded when using the Maestro over a SmartLink or any high latency connection and that the defect manifests itself as the keying errors that you have recorded."

Unfortunately, this makes the Maestro useless for CW contesting over Smartlink and to a lesser extent over the local LAN.

Any chance it was fixed and just not listed as that particular bug in the changelog?

John K1ESE

Eric-KE5DTO

#7378 is being looked at, but is not complete yet and thus was not included in this release.

K1ESE

Thanks for the reply, Eric.  Waiting eagerly...

K1ESE

JohnSweeney

I suggest that this bug receive major attention.   Not being able to use CW with a Maestro using a local keyer/paddle is very discouraging.  Works fine on 2.49.

ctate243

There are a number of cw issues that I can confidently say are on the "fix radar" of the team.  During Hamvention 2019, I had the great honor and privilege to work with the flex team and interact with the flex user community at their booth.  one perk was that It gave me an opportunity to introduce some top cw operator/dxpeditioneer/contester flex users to the flex programming team to offer direct feedback on several outstanding issues, helping put them into real world use context.  I am hopeful and confident some of these items will get attention as their bandwidth allows.

K9SO

Looking at the change log of yet another release (3.1.7) and I see that this issue is still not fixed. I can no longer upgrade software due to this.

Have you forgotten about us Maestro remote CW users?????

Every upgrade seems to be a disappointing step backwards for me.  I still have to run 2.4.9 since it's the only software that works.

Fred Glenn
K9SO

K9SO

I think in fairness to the Flex Radio team, I should add that v.2.4.9 works just as well as it did when I first installed it and it's good that we can go back to earlier releases.   If I had purchased a more conventional radio the issue of future releases would never even come up … there wouldn't be any.

There are some interesting new things in the v.3.x releases that I might like to use but because of a few bugs associated with their implementation I cannot. Still, I haven't been harmed in any way with respect to my alternatives. The old software still works the same way it always has.

It would be cool to use some of the new features though. 

Fred Glenn
K9SO


 

Eric-KE5DTO

I really appreciate you sharing that.  I can definitely understand your frustration in your post yesterday and the short answer is: No!  We haven't forgotten about you.

chris1165

I bought a 6400 and Maestro about two months ago. I initially had latency issues with CW but realized it was my wifi setting. Since then, I haven't had any issues. In fact, I've been using smartlink and making CW contacts left and right and even on low latency networks. After upgrading to 3.1.7 I was paranoid issues would occur but they didn't. Is this really a well known issue or am I missing something? One thing I had to do is turn down my display settings such as rate.

K9SO

I've established a parallel CW paddle keying path to back up my Maestro keying and that gives me the ability to upgrade to v3.x which has known defect remote keying issues. Those issues were introduced after v2.4.9 and I've had to use that SW ever since to operate remotely. 

So my parallel keying path is a couple of RemoteRig boxes (essentially serial servers with VoIP). I ran these flawlessly for years before v2.x came around. But when v3.x came around things changed.

The paddle keying algorithm used by the RemoteRig guys is really quite simple and instead of making an automatic measurement, the CW delay introduced to eliminate jitter errors can simply be adjusted by the user until things work. Sometimes, making things too automatic gets one into trouble.

It's too bad I have to be so "retro" here when I have so much invested in FlexRadio SDRs, Maestros, and PGXLs, but it is what it is. My history with Flex is that they eventually incorporate all my work-arounds. 

At least now I can be more patient and finally use v3.x (I hope).

Russ Ravella

So tragic you have to go through all of that rather than Flex Executive management simply taking responsibility for the problem (and all the others) and fixing them.

Dan Trainor

As I mentioned in another thread, I was going to purchase a Maestro this week but decided not to specifically because of this issue.

Russ Ravella

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, Flex Executive Management is now censoring feedback that complains about bug problems rather than just actually fix the bugs.  We'll see how long this one lasts...

Rich McCabe

Russ, why do you say that?  Censoring feedback?  First I have heard of this.

73,

Rich

Russ Ravella

Hi Rich,

Well,  I first noticed it after Dan Quigley was hired around the time Flex won the Raytheon contract.  I don’t know if it was happening before that.  Several Flex owners were quite concerned that rather than increase the resources available to work software bug problems as Flex Executive Management claimed, the contract would actually sap resources instead.  Not unreasonable since a government contract with performance and schedule requirements would naturally have higher priority than the amateur retail business.

Many people posted feedback accordingly and had their posts removed almost immediately.  There were more responses and more removals. Specific concerns about bugs in general were removed.  Several of mine were removed.  Apparently in an attempt to misdirect attention, Dan Quigley posted an entirely unmotivated defense of Flex employees when not one word in one post had criticized them in the slightest, and the thread was closed.  What was allowed to remain paints an entirely inaccurate picture of customer’s feedback regarding that issue.
  
Other posts were censored later as well with no reference to the contract at all, mostly regarding customer feedback involving software bugs.  You‘d see them appear, then they’d vanish. You post something, then it’s censored.  It’s tragic that Flex chooses to manage the bug problem this way, rather than just fix the bugs.  Flex directs customers to seek help for problems and provide feedback here.  Since they control the narrative by censorship the forum's purpose is distorted.  I don’t know what if any definite algorithm is used to decide what is and isn't censored.  Clearly lots of posts aren't censored as well.  We'll see about this one.  So far, they've let it remain.

Rich McCabe

OK, thanks for the update.

I for one am hoping for some fixes but really dont keep track of what is going on around here on a regular basis.

Appreciate your detailed response.

Rich

Russ Ravella

No problem Rich, glad to help.  Good DX and best 73

Russ

Dan Trainor

Any word on when this bug will be fixed?