[Lowfer] Deep-search opera on Windows 7, 64 bit PC

[Garry Hess]

I've managed to get opds to run with SpectraVue and Spec Lab inside a 
Windows XP Mode Virtual Machine on my PC. However, this isn't viable 
because the USB link freezes within an hour or so. Apparently my HP 
Pro3500 machine doesn't have quite enough horsepower to run everything 
in the virtual machine.

However, a viable solution has been pointed out by Joe, DF2JP. Run 
SpectraVue (or whatever software controls your SDR, if you're receiving 
with an SDR) and Spectrum Laboratory on your host machine. But create a 
shared folder with "data" subfolder between host and guest virtual 
machine and save the FFT results to it. In the virtual machine (Windows 
XP mode, VMware, Oracle VM VirtualBox, or whatever), modify opds.ini so 
the sourcepath points to that shared folder/subfolder.

Worked fine for me last night and I even was able to simultaneously run 
regular opera on the host for decode comparisons. The opera CPU gas 
gauge complained of overload but it's not accurate - the load according 
to the task manager performance tab was only averaging about 55%.

It wasn't the greatest of nights for TA propagation. Only saw HGA22 a 
couple of brief times on the SpectraVue waterfall. Decoded VO1NA with 
both setups and of course opds was best.
-- 
73, Garry, K3SIW, EN52ta, Elgin, IL