Using Memories

Commander Online Help Contents

Commander provides 100 memories, organized into ten banks of 10. Memories in the currently-selected memory bank appear in a panel that shares the right side of Commander's Main window with readouts for frequency-dependent devices and receiver filter controls. This panel also contains a button for each memory bank that, when clicked, selects that memory bank and displays its memories. If the currently-selected memory bank is not visible, click the Main window's Mem button to make it appear in place of the device and bandwidth controls.

Within a memory bank, each memory stores a frequency, mode, and filter setting.

• Clicking on a memory's Save button saves your radio's current frequency, mode, and filter setting in that memory, as well as the state of Commander's Split, Ham bands only, and Dual receive checkboxes (if those functions are supported by your radio); to protect memories from inadvertent modification, the Save buttons can be disabled.
  

• You can edit any memory's frequency, mode, and filter setting using standard Window's gestures and keystrokes.
  

• After clicking on a memory's frequency display, you can select its contents by striking the Insert key; any digits subsequently entered will replace the frequency display's contents.
  

• Clicking on a memory's Sel button will set your transceiver to that memory's frequency, mode, and filter setting if the frequency and mode are valid, and will set Commander's Split, Ham bands only, and Dual receive checkboxes to the values stored in that memory (if those functions are supported by your transceiver). Commander disables the Sel buttons associated with memories that do not contain a valid frequency and mode.

  A specified Command Sequence can be executed when you activate a memory by clicking its Sel button.

• You can specify the font color and background color used to display frequencies.

By editing textboxes in the Memory Banks panel on the Configuration window's Memories tab, you can establish a title for each memory bank ; the title for the currently-selected memory bank serves as the caption of the Main window panel that displays the currently-selected memory bank. To quickly edit a memory bank's title, depress the Ctrl key while clicking that memory bank's button.

To help keep track of each memory's purpose,  you can record notes that pop up whenever the mouse cursor hovers over the memory's Sel button. To record such notes,  depress the Ctrl key while clicking the Sel button; Commander will display a Memory Notes Editor window that allows you to capture notes:

• notes may not contain the angle bracket characters < or > .

• clicking the Notes Editor's Insert Timestamp button appends a the current UTC date and time to the notes

You can direct Commander to display each memory's notes in place of its frequency, mode, and filter -- simply click the command button captioned ~ in the upper right corner of the memory bank panel. To return to a display of memory frequency, mode, and filter, click the ~ button again.

To clear a memory's frequency, mode, filter setting, and notes, depress the Ctrl key while clicking the Save button.

Scanning and "Band Hopping"

To continuously scan valid memories in the current bank, check the Scan box on the Main window. With memory scanning enabled, Commander will sequentially activate each of the current bank's memories that contain a valid frequency and mode, skipping memories not containing a valid frequency or mode. The time between activations is defined by the Scan Dwell setting. If none of the current bank's memories are valid, Commander will uncheck the Scan box and stop scanning. While scanning, the following actions will uncheck the Scan box and stop scanning:

• clicking in the Bandspread window's frequency dial

• double-clicking the Bandspread window's SpotCollector Alert indicator

• receipt of a QSY directive from another application

This scanning functionality can be used to implement "Band Hopping" - continuously scanning a sequence of FT8 or FT4 sub-bands. With an appropriate Scan Dwell setting (.e.g. 120 seconds) and a multi-band antenna, a single instance of WSJT-X can populate SpotCollector with local spots of decoded FT8 or FT4 stations from multiple bands. However, it should not be used with SteppIR or other automatic tape extending antennas, as the frequent band changes may cause decreased antenna life time.

 Saving and Restoring Memories

To save the information associated with all memories that contain at least a frequency and mode, click the Export Memories button on the Configuration window's Memories tab. Commander will prompt you for a filename, and then store the data in a format described below. 

To load memories with information from a file, click the Import Memories button on the Configuration window's Memories tab. Commander will prompt you for a filename, and then interpret each line of the file as specifying the contents of one memory via the following tags:

• To be valid, a memory specification line must contain a valid <Memory n> tag, a valid <Frequency f> tag, and a valid <Mode mode-name> tag. 

• The absence of a <Split on> tag is interpreted to mean "disable split"; the equivalent is true for the <Hambands on>, and <Dual on> tags. 

• The order of memories within the file is irrelevant, as is the order of tags within a line.

Here are some sample memory specification lines:

<Memory 1> <Freq 3,013> <Mode CW> <Filter Narrow> <Split On> <Notes 5R8FU stakeout>
<Memory 11> <Freq 14,260> <Mode USB> <Filter Narrow> <Notes 20m IOTA>
<Memory 12> <Freq 21,260> <Mode USB> <Notes 15m IOTA>

Errors encountered while importing memory specifications are recorded in an error file that is displayed when the import operation completes. The name of the error file is composed by appending _errors to the name of the file being imported.