ericek111
0c440ed865
ESM is how most people run N1MM, and it was not here at all — not in the code,
not even in the list of what is missing. Config ▸ ESM turns it on and it stays
on between runs.
The decision is a table in N1MM's function-key documentation, and it is written
here as one: the state of the callsign and exchange boxes, whether the station
is running or searching, and whether the call and the exchange have gone out
already, give the function keys Enter sends and whether the contact is logged
after them. Esm.Decide is that table and nothing else, so it is tested against
every row rather than by clicking.
Searching: type a call, Enter sends your call, space moves to the exchange, and
once the exchange is filled in Enter sends yours and logs. Running: Enter calls
CQ, a call in the box makes Enter send his call and the exchange, and the next
Enter ends the contact and logs it. A dupe gets QSO B4 while running and nothing
while searching, unless dupes are worked, which is what N1MM recommends and what
this does out of the box. F1 puts a searching station into run mode.
The entry window highlights the keys Enter would send next, so what is about to
happen is on the screen rather than in the operator's head. `=` sends whatever
Enter last sent. Escape and F12 put ESM back to the start of a contact.
Send Corrected Call is in as well: copy SM3AB, send it, fix it to SM3ABC, and
the message that ends the contact goes out as "SM3ABC TU DL1ABC". That is why
N1MM's documentation says to put ! in F5 rather than {CALL}, so the default F5
message is now ! . F6 is QSO B4, which is the message ESM sends a dupe; it used
to repeat the exchange, which no part of the table asks for.
{EXCHSENT} means something again, now that there is an ESM state for it to set.
Worked end to end against a fake cwdaemon: a search-and-pounce contact logged in
four keystrokes, a run contact in three, both with the right text on the keyer
in the right order, and the corrected call in front of the last message.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
8.2 KiB
What is not finished, and what has not been tested
Two separate lists. A feature can be finished and untested, or half-built and exercised every day. Written 2026-08-27.
Never run against the real thing
Everything below is written from a published protocol or from N1MM's source and tested against a fake that speaks the same protocol. A fake agrees with whatever the person who wrote it believed, so these are the places where a wrong belief is still sitting there undiscovered.
| What | Tested against | What has never happened |
|---|---|---|
RigctldRadio |
a stand-in for rigctld over a real socket |
no real rigctld, no real radio. The extended answer format, the + prefix and the split commands are from the documented protocol. If the format is wrong, nothing works rather than something being subtly off — check this first. |
OtrspBox |
a MemoryStream, checking the bytes |
no real SO2R box. Command forms are from N1MM's N1MMPort.cs. |
ClusterClient |
a node fake over a real socket, sending the telnet negotiation, the login prompt and spot lines | no live cluster node. Which nodes send bare CR, and which send option negotiation, is guessed from N1MM's code. |
StationNetwork |
the message format, round-tripped | no second station, and no N1MM on the same network. |
CwDaemonSender |
the UDP messages, and a fake daemon that answers the <ESC>h reply request |
no cwdaemon, no radio keyed. |
WinkeyerSender |
the status-byte reader, on its own | no test of the serial side, and no WinKeyer. The host-mode open sequence is from the WinKeyer datasheet; the status bits are from N1MM's Winkey.cs. |
The Cabrillo output has not been put in front of a contest sponsor's robot.
Half-built
Voice keying. MessageSender was written to cover a voice keyer playing a
recording, and nothing implements it. No DVK support either, so the second radio
of an SO2R station cannot call CQ by voice. Alternating CQ therefore works on CW
only, though nothing in it is CW-specific: a voice keyer that reports when the
recording has finished would drive it as it stands.
Alternating CQ does not restart itself after a contact. Escape stops it, and it has to be started again with Ctrl+B. N1MM carries on calling after the QSO is logged.
Call history: the section-validating directives. !!Validate50State!!,
!!ValidateArrlSection!!, !!MapOnSection!! and !!GTA2GH_NT2TER!! are read
and passed over. Acting on them means holding N1MM's section lists and its
rules about which sections are retired, and getting that wrong throws away good
data. The file is read without them.
The QTC window does not transmit. Ctrl+Z opens it and traffic goes into the log, but N1MM sends the QTC text itself: the lines on CW and RTTY, and recorded voice messages for QRV, Agn, Cfm and TU on SSB. Here the Agn, Cfm and RX Ready buttons only move the cursor. What is missing under it is the message templates for QTC traffic, a voice keyer, and the digital window.
The QTC setup covers the window, not the sending. Right-click ▸ Setup has the four settings that change how the window behaves, with N1MM's defaults. What is not there is everything about putting QTCs on the air: N1MM's CW messages for Agn and TU, its SQTC field spacing, its four SSB recordings, and its RTTY message templates. Those wait on a transmit path.
Two WAE numbers do not agree with N1MM, both from 2020 and 2021 logs. The
disagreements are the country file of the day, not the rules: 4U1A counted as
4U1V then and as OE in today's wl_cty.dat, KP2BH counted as KP2 then
and is listed as a US call now, and China was not split by call area yet. The
2022 to 2025 logs agree to the contact. One difference is ours on purpose: N1MM
counts a callsign it cannot place — D1M — as a multiplier with an empty
value, and we do not.
Telnet window: what N1MM has and this does not. Left out: the special-calls list, and saving received spots to a database — N1MM keeps those spots in its admin database, which is not the log file the two programs share, so there is nothing to be compatible with and nothing asks to read them back. The band plan tab is not repeated either, because Config ▸ Sub bands already edits the same numbers.
The node list is downloaded from the public NG3K page rather than from N1MM's
own web service, which asks the operator to opt in to data collection and is
N1MM's to run. A page that changes shape would stop the download working; the
reading only needs telnet:// links in a table, and the old list stays in place
when a download brings back something unreadable.
Not every action macro is acted on. The text macros and the action macros
that this program can carry out are listed in the README. What is read and
passed over: the {CAT…} and radio-hex families, the audio and rotator macros,
{STEREOON} and {STEREOOFF}, the call-stacking macros, {CONDJUMP},
{QSYCQ}, {FORCELOG}, {SwapContests}, the digital TNC macros ({ENTER},
{ESC}, {CTRL-A}…), and the wav-directory macros, which wait on voice keying.
A message holding any of them still sends the right characters.
The CW keyer macros are not read either: < and > for speed, ~ for a half
space, and the prosign characters ], [, + and =. They belong to the
keyer rather than to the expander — cwdaemon and a WinKeyer each have their own
way of saying them — and they go out as the characters they are.
The busted-spot check is one character wide. N1MM offers two. Every call one character away from the spotted one is looked up in the callsign database, which is a few hundred lookups per spot; two characters away is a few hundred thousand, which is too much work per spot for the little it would add.
Digital modes. A contact can be logged as RTTY or another digital mode, and the contest rules score it, but there is no digital window: no decoding, no transmitting, no interface to fldigi, MMTTY or similar.
Contest coverage. Eight families are built in, plus whatever .udc files
are in the user-defined folder. N1MM ships well over a hundred. Opening a log
from a contest that is in neither place fails with the contest name, which is
the right answer but it is still a wall.
Most of what is missing does not need code. A contest whose exchange is a
report and one value, scored by band, mode, continent or country, and counted
by country, zone, section or prefix, is a .udc file, and the file published
for N1MM is read as it is. Code is for the ones .udc has no words for: WAE
needs QTC traffic, IOTA needs island references as multipliers, and CQ WW RTTY
needed a third multiplier and its own points table because it shares a name
with the CW and SSB running of the contest.
What .udc cannot say here yet: an exchange that differs by the other
station's country (the OK/OM district against a serial number from everyone
else), points that depend on a zone or a distance, and multiplier sources
beyond country, prefix, zone, section, exchange, grid and continent.
Known rough edges
The log window's column widths are the grid's own automatic sizing with a character-count floor. A column can change width as rows scroll into view.
Contacts arriving over the station network are applied from the socket
thread, and AppSession.TakeFromNetwork reopens the whole contest to do it.
That is correct but heavy, and it discards what is typed in an entry window on
another radio.
The band plan covers 160M to 2M only. 60M and everything above 2M get no CW, digital or phone shading on the bandmap, because N1MM's own numbers for those bands contradict themselves — its CW top for 1.25M is below its phone start, and its 70CM CW top is above the band. Config ▸ Sub bands cannot add a band that has no default.
Available mults and Qs is only as good as the bandmap. It lists what is spotted, so a multiplier nobody has spotted is not there. N1MM's window also shows the mults a contest has and nobody has worked, which needs a list of every multiplier the contest counts. Only the section and state lists are held here, so the zone and country lists would have to come from the country file first.
Two entry windows and one keyer. The SO2R box is told which radio to key before each message, but nothing stops both radios sending at once if the operator asks them to.