Update breaks Fldigi

I thought I'd see if I could get Dave, W1HKJ's excellent data mode software Fldigi talking to my new Juma transceiver and noticed that an update, version 3.11, was released yesterday. Although I didn't even understand any of the changes listed in the release notes, never mind need any of them, I decided to download the new version. Big mistake.

The new version doesn't communicate with my Elecraft K3 at all using RigCat. (HamLib, the much vaunted universal rig communication library, which I guess most Fldigi users use, still doesn't support the K3 at all.)

The first problem is that Fldigi loses the rig configuration settings from the old version, so you have to put them in again. Having done that, the program puts the rig into transmit and that's that. What's more, it completely rogers the K3's communications so it won't communicate properly even when you try another setting unless you turn the transceiver off and then on again. I remember having this headache the first time I tried to get Fldigi working with the K3. I think it's what caused a lot of people to whom I'd recommended Fldigi to give up altogether, because they tried settings that should have worked but didn't because the K3 had gone into a huff.

Unfortunately I didn't discover the trouble with the new version and the K3 until after I had spent a lot of time trying to set up another copy of Fldigi to work with the Juma TRX2. Those attempts were unsuccessful too, but whether that is due to the same reason it won't talk to the K3 or something else is anyone's guess.

Fortunately I had kept a copy of the previous version, 3.10, so I was able to reinstall that and get Fldigi talking to my K3 again. I'll have another go at getting that version to work with the Juma later. I know I should try to find out what is causing the problem with the new version so I can report it to Dave, but life - and my temper - is too short. I just don't have the patience any more to deal with the tiresome propensity of computers to make the simplest of tasks difficult. I just want things to work.