Some tips for WSJT-X

So after a week of experience with WSJT-X and in the interest of full disclosure, I am clearly no expert.  But here are a few gems that I’ve found by reading through the manual a few times:

• Set the incoming level to about 30 on the scale.  Best results are when the slider to the right is about mid-scale, so use your sound card controls to position it to 30.
• The decode rate is critical.  I was pretty sure mine was set at the recommended 48000 samples per second.  I had noticed several strong carriers that were appearing on the waterfall display that did not correspond to signals shown in the P3 pass-band.  These signals ranged from 5-30 dB over the noise floor.  I suspected my sound interface, but Spectrum Lab showed it to be clean.  I double checked the recording device/properties/advanced and found it was set to “CD Quality, 16-bit, 44100 Hz”.  I changed it to “DVD Quality, 16-bit, 48000 Hz” and everything was just fine with the waterfall.
• The software does support bidirectional rig control.  You will notice a small box, about the size of a check box, slightly to the left and down from the ORG window.  This is colored orange when rig control is unidirectional.  If you adjust the Setup/Configuration screen “Polling rate” to 1 or 2 seconds, then that box will be colored green.  Now any VFO change will show up on the ORG display (in theory).  For the most part it works fine with my K3, but it does seem to get upset when I change bands.
  

  Red Text Illustrates Green Rig Control Box

• You can use Split Tuning for optimal transmit tone generation.  Since WSJT-X can sample up to 4 KHz of spectrum for JT65 and JT9 signals, it is possible to see and decode both areas at once (if you have a receive pass-band that can handle 4 KHz).  However the audio pass-band on transmit may well block higher frequency tones.  In my case, I could decode a signal at 3000 Hz with no problem, but there was zero output because 3000 Hz tones were out of my transmit pass-band.  By enabling Split in the Setup/Configuration screen AND setting my K3 to Split, WSJT-X will shift the transmit VFO to keep the generated tones in a 1500-2000 Hz window.  This works in both unidirectional and bidirectional Rig Control modes.  By the way, when this feature is enabled, a “S” appears in the orange or green box near the ORG window.