HI David,

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Thanks, anyone willing to take on the task of going through emails and files is more than welcome to use what I wrote about my filter explorations in the creation of (or updating) a FAQ about D-Rats.

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In his huge collection of files supporting D-Rats, Patrick has a very nice “Operating With D-RATS” guide for 0.3.3 that is somewhat dated. ?Now that Maurizio and Marius are making new contributions and debugging D-Rats now at the 0.3.9. version level, updating is going to be important. ?I don’t think there has been a lot of “new” added so much as there has been consolidation of some “Feeping Creatures” that occurred in early development phases. Useful features that Dan had been dropped (probably for legitimate development reasons) are been fixed and added back. We need to know what all the current version does and focus on that. Unfortunately email reflectors tend to accumulate “loose ends” and a search of email “threads” can be a dive through a whole lot of rabbit burrows that lead nowhere. Not what new users want or need to do.

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Patrick O’Connor has already assembled 98% of everything needed, so a D-RATS group Wiki would only really need to be a guide to the files area plus a FAQ. Editing the group Wiki is a moderator function, so the curator would have the ability to limit additions to “tried and true” information… A back-of-the-napkin “project management analysis” suggests that one could use the existing setup and how to document(s), consolidate and update those that need it, and make the guide available. New information can be added to documents on the fly directly or in Wiki form, but that job is much harder with PDFs. If Patrick is willing authorize it and someone can step up, it would be great if a person with the time to act as curator for the D-RATS group wiki area could organize and initiate the process..

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I have started doing something like this with the HFDStar group which is relatively new. As I have time, I plan to add additional info using some the old documents: more on operating techniques, using AMBE dongle plus a GMSK modem to bring DV to rigs with the 9600 baud modem port, set up and configuration of Flex 6000 waveforms for DV, etc. Several folks, most notably Kent Hufford, KQ4KK, and Stewart Lloyd, WI3J have written some good material, plus there are some good YouTube videos that can be referenced. Makes curation much easier.

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Wiki’s are always works in progress and take active curation. I will be happy to submit material, but I don’t have time to take on the curation (self-employed and “not-yet-retired”).

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Best,

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Jack Spitznagel – KD4IZ

Trustee for NR3DT

The Museum Ship USCGC Taney WHEC-37 Amateur Radio Group

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Thanks Al,

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Will be happy to hear his feedback. Also to know whether he checks into the USCG Amateur Radio Net on Saturdays at noon. 14.300MHz with net control W5CGC.

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Jack Spitznagel – KD4IZ

Trustee for NR3DT

The Museum Ship USCGC Taney WHEC-37 Amateur Radio Group

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Al,

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I tried using the [QST] tab at the beginning and at the end of my line up. As long as the other “rats” were tabbed, the QST tab stopped harvesting the particular QST’s sent to those “rats”. If a “rat” was not tabbed, then a QST sent to it would be routed to the [QST] tab…

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I use the ratflectors you see for various nets and general chat. There are many I don’t use because they are either mostly silent, or they are not of interest to me. Adding or subtracting servers to the linked list is rather clumsy. I would prefer that there be a dynamic checklist, but with reflectors, you don’t know always which ones will be dependably available.

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Jack – KD4IZ

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All,

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Being the inquisitive person I am, I had to do non-destructive discovery testing… without disruption of primary traffic functions. I completed my first round last night with the help of Paul, K9PTF and forbearance of the Alabama Ratflector folks.

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Of course I was able to verify Al’s KF5SMH statement about creating a [QST] filter tab – it grabs all of them if the filter is created. I did that first. The Main tab will no longer have any QST’s present.

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Next I wanted to see if I created an [Alabama] filter in addition, what would happen to the QSTs originated from that Ratflector. They shown in the [Alabama] filter but no longer in the [QST] filter tab.

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The same is true for any additional ratflector specific filter tabs I create. Those tabs now receive QST’s to that group and those QSTs no long shown in the [QST] filter tab.

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Channels and Private Chats appear to remain immune to QSTs.

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At this point I wondered if the order of the tabs might change the behavior. They do not. The presence of a ratflector specific filter group “hijacks” any QST originating from that group.

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Hopefully we can convince Maurizio to look at this behavior so the presence of a [QST] filter tab will take precedence over any other tabs and “harvest” all QSTs. This will enable each ratflector specific filter tab to provide an interruption free chat, yet leave a central place to look at QST’s that are sent.

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An example of how I configured the Chat screen is shown below. For those who are not using the feature yet, note that a Filter Tab containing RED letters contain unread traffic:

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Have fun on D-Rats –

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Jack Spitznagel – KD4IZ

Trustee for NR3DT

The Museum Ship USCGC Taney WHEC-37 Amateur Radio Group

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Hi Don

Suggest to start from here:

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