CHIRP

Sounds buggy to me :)

Please attach your .img file and your debug.log and I'll have a look.

Thanks!

Hi Steve,

What is the frequency that is supposed to be in channel number 39?

It looks to be 451.724, which shouldn't be supported by the radio, as I understand it.

Thanks!

Dan:

Thanks for taking a look at this.

Ahha! I didn't notice until you asked about channel #39, but Chrip doesn't display that row in the tabulated data! That's why I didn't see that frequency occuring.

Anyway, the radio is already programmed in memory, with channel #39 at 451.724 MHz, as I received it used from the previous owner.

The radio does display this frequency! This frequency is within the specified range of coverage of the radio (Rx only). However, when I tune the VFO near it, using the knob or up/down arrow keys, I can only reach 451.720 and 451.725 MHz, i.e., 5 kHz steps, consistent with the minimum channel step specification. Also, I cannot tune the VFO to 451.724 by direct keyboard entry. It balks at the '4' and will only take '0' or '5', consistent with the 5kHz steps. P.S. My tuning step size was set to 5 kHz. When I set steps to 'Auto', the entry 451.72 auto completes as 451.725, and the step size at that frequency is 12.5 kHz (shows 12/13 rounded).

I recently had a brief exchange with the previous owner, and he mentioned that he used a G4HFQ program (FTBVX8 I assume) to manage the memories. Perhaps that program allows this frequency setting. I have't tried it. I'm not sure what frequency the radio actually tunes, despite the display value. I doubt I can check that accurately (i.e., is it capable of 'in between step' tuning, at 451.724 MHz?).

I will try to delete this channel setting in memory, and rerun Chirp without the (alleged) bogus value. I don't need it, afaik. I'll get back to you on how that goes.

With sincere respect for your limited development time and need to prioritize; there appear to be some opportunities to tweak Chirp, to be more informative and robust under the circumstances. E.G., Beginner's help warning this sort of mishap could occur (weak), notification of 'bad' frequency value after cloning download (fair), show the data received but flag it 'bad' and ignore it (better), skip a 'bad' value on export and cloning upload and keep on chugging (good with former flag), maybe force a round-off to the nearest 'good' value (could be troublesome ass-u-me-ing right value), etc.

Thanks again for taking a look at this. I will keep watching Chirp with interest and experiment the best I can on my VX-8R.

Steve

Dan:

OK!.

I changed the 451.724 to 451.725 and everything proceeded AOK; .img->.csv+changes->.img. (I couldn't remove that memory, but I don't know the radio well enough yet!)

Now I will get busy and make a pile of new/replacement memory entries suited to my locale, in Chirp, and upload them to the radio.

Your proposed change seems OK. We'll see the bad data and be better able to make sense of the error message that started me off on this Bug Report. !! Curious that Bug #39 was coincidentally about a bad memory #39 - it would be hard to make it happen on purpose :) I'll pick up the next daily build version.

Thanks for your time and support.

Beyond this, I would like to dabble with Chirp, to the point of being able to manage every button, bell and whistle in the radio that can be touched via the cloning interface. I also have a 'new' used FT-8800R and would do the same for it. I know that is out of your committed scope for Chirp. Perhaps that is ultimately how Chirp or some companion program can harness some extra developer time and evolve, without pulling you too far into the nitty gritty of specific radios. I like open source, have setup Python(x,y), a few extras like PyCairo, wxPython, and I could likely get Pango and your other dependencies going in my environment. I'm limited now to using other peoples' Windows binaries, and don't intend to mount any new M$ developer tools, for $$$ anyway. I do have at least one Linux system but my migration away from the evil empire is slow. I presume that the extra information about radio configuration is in the .img files (or at least in memory when the radio is cloned). If you have mapped that out at all it would be interesting to start exploring the contents. If you're game, perhaps we could start another thread about this.

Thanks again for your time and attention to this bug.

73,
Steve