Maestro Enhancements

Mark_WS7M

In preparation for our WWV celebration operation in October I brought my Maestro and radio over to an operators house that has never used a Flex before.

I wanted to learn what things I would need to document and be prepared to train our guest operations on.

Out of this exercise a number of questions were asked that struck me as easy improvement to the Maestro:

1) Ability to lock sllice B to follow slice A.  While not a show stopper this guy wanted to use the two slices as if he was doing split and wanted slice B to in effect follow slice A on a QSY.   Interesting feature and probably could be supported pretty easily.

2) Pan zoom.  This comes directly from the ops use of a 7300.  He asked if there was a way to quickly zoom in to see an area like +/- 2kz of his signal.  His point was when working a pile up this allows you to see the station calling that is off frequency a little.    While we can certainly zoom our sizes with pinch gestures I think this could be a really need feature to be able to set into on of the F keys.   Press to zoom, press again to unzoom.

3) Locking power.  The power setting the Maestro is right on the same knob as the CW speed.  This causes this guy to several times increase or decrease power  when attempting to adjust CW speed.  The suggestion would be a menu items that locked transmit power where it was.  As it sits now for our WWV celebration which will be running amplifiers I think I will need to use Gaffers Tape or something on the power knobs.  Or perhaps write a small utility that continuously sets the TX power to our desired level.

4) CW record and replay.  He asked if the system had a mode where he could send CW and record the CW to be replayed again later for repeating things like CQ.   Yes this can be done with N1MM and other programs but it does seem like something the Maestro could feature.

Just some thoughts.

Mark

John - K3MA

The function keys F1 F2 F3 can be programmed to send cw like CQ

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Mark

The fastest way to zoom and in and out is by pinching in and out.  That works very well.

You can use FRStack to have VFO A follow B, as well as a quick zoom.  

You can set a MAX power in the TX Band settings.  

Mike

N9VC

Paul_M0AIA