Unfortunately, the User (or Help) Guide for WSJT-X from K1JT is not written as well as it could be. He completely glosses over important functions and overemphasizes the theoretical- as if theory was somehow the operator of a station. There are misspellings and grammar errors, inconsistent formatting and incomplete sections. And that’s just skimming the surface. Additionally, the User Guide is written at about the 6th or 7th grade level, which also does not help end users very well: his penchant for oversimplification in the name of clarity naturally requires not explaining things at all- which certainly has the effect of making a document clearer, though its side effect is to make its content impotent.
A counter argument goes something like, well, you know the most important part of a program is the program itself. Let the documentation sort itself out! It wouldn’t be open source software if it wasn’t hurried out the door incomplete and buggy! And so on. Of course, these same developers wonder why no one seems to want to use their very fancy program without ever wondering, not once, about what the end user perspective would be. Or, for that matter, how to reach the end user with needed information so that they can make the right choices for their respective setup.
Not everyone who will try the program will initially find it intuitive and will need more explanation than is presently offered in the current User Guide. Some may simply be curious about what something does. Some may try to optimize their station to churn out more contacts. Some are long time ops and some just got their license last week. No matter the case, in what I’ve attempted to do here, I hope that the explanations I’ve brought to bear on what is a very multifaceted program will be of use to you. I’ve tried to give you more “ingredients” so that you can better prepare your station for the operating conditions you find yourself in. Please note: this is a work in progress, and pages will be added as time permits.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Bill Sommerville, G4WJS, for providing a lot of raw answers that I’ve worked into the following pages. Any errors that remain are mine.
Please feel free to navigate to the page you need from the menu at the top, or by clicking on one of the following links: