Fldigi
offers tips on the use of nearly every aspect of its operation.
These are particularly useful when you first use the program, but
after you are familiar with it's operation they tend to get in the way.
You can turn them off by de-selecting "Show tooltips"
Some users prefer to not have icons on the menu system. You can turn them off also.
Fldigi
offers three different look and feel based on the parent Fast Light
Toolkit graphics interface; "base", "gtk+" and "plastic". These
can be combined with command line specifiers for the default background
and foreground colors to create a user unique look to fldigi. You
will probably discover that the default colors and the gtk+ UI scheme
are to be preferred.
You may not want to use all possible modes when operating fldigi.
Press the "Visible modes" button and open the mode selector dialog

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The use of this dialog should be obvious after a few clicks here and there.
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By deselecting all but CW, PSK31, PSK63 and RTTY
the Op_Mode menu is decluttered of all the other modes. The WWV
and Freq Analysis modes are always visible. When a subset of the
entire mode bank is selected a new menu item is added to the Op_Mode
menu, "Show all modes". This is a toggle to restore all modes to
the menu. The inverse toggle is "Show fewer modes."
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Capturing Log data
Fldigi
has a built in logbook. You
can request to be prompted whenever there is an unsaved entry in the
qso log area. You can also elect to whether to clear all of the
qso fields when the log is saved or to leave them intact.
Auto-fill Country and Azimuth uses the data found in the file
"cnty.dat" that you should download and place in the fldigi default
folder. You can force the callsign field to be upper case
independent of capture or keyboard entry. You enter your default
Transmit Power which is used for the logbook record.
Fldigi
has various ways to transfer data in the Rx panel to the qso logging
fields. The default is to use a Shift-Left-Click paradigm.
You can also use a double click method if you prefer. The
Shift-Left-Click will still function. Each data item is
considered to be a single word normally delimited by the space, tab or
end-of-line character. You can add word delimiter characters in
the designated text box. The default is to add *-,.; to the
normal delimiters. This is a useful tool for extracting contest
exchange data. The exchange might be RST, STATE and NAME.
The station being worked might send this as 599-NJ-Bozo. Double
clicking on the 599 NJ and Bozo would treat each as a separate word.
If
you check the "Show callsign tooltips in received text" then the Rx
text area will popup an information box whenever the mouse is held over
a callsign for more than 2 seconds. The popup will look like one
of the following:

The
data is derived by parsing the callsign and referral to both the
logbook and the "cty.dat" file. If the station was previously
worked the operator's name and azimuth/distance will be computed from
the logbook gridsquare entry (Loc). Otherwise the
azimuth/distance is computed from the data in the cty.dat file.
This file is maintained by, and can be downloaded from the following web site:
http://www.country-files.com/Download the file and put it in your fldigi default files folder.
You can select to use check buttons (boxes) for
the AFC and Squelch controls. This change requires a restart of fldigi for it to be effective.
You can configure the appearance of fldigi in a variety of ways,
including the suppression of unused waterfall controls. The
"Oper' Controls" tab contains selection for nearly every waterfall
control.
Before adjusting these settings it is recommended that you enable this menu item:
You can then see the effect of enabling and disabling the various selection boxes.
Fldigi
supports a generic but robust set of contest functions. In
addition to serial-in and serial-out you can capture and transmit three
exchange sequences unique to a specific contest. Enter the
exchange you want to send for each of the three. You can force
the RST in/out to always be 599. That seems to be a norm for many
contests. When operating in a CW contest you can have fldigi send
cut numbers, T for 0, N for nine.
The serial number can be set
to use leading zeros. You can specifiy the starting number for
the sequence and how many digits are sent, ie: 0024. Pressing
Reset will set the starting number to the qso logging serial out field.
See
Contest How To for more info.
You can check for duplicates
by any combination of the specified named fields. You can also
specify that the duplicate had to occur with a given time interval.
Some VHF contests allow a duplicate CALL after a given time
interval.