AetherSDR v0.9.7 — CW keying overhaul + reliability sweep

CW keying overhaul + reliability sweep

A focused follow-up to v0.9.6 with two themes: a substantial CW operator
upgrade — keyboard and MIDI-mapped straight key + iambic paddles, full
break-in / QSK respect on both paths, netCW timing fixes, and Apollo-era
Quindar tones on PTT engage/disengage — and a reliability sweep covering
SpotHub auto-reconnect, a TCI crash on quit, the long-standing waterfall
TX trail, hardware PTT regressions, and DAX RX latency.

Big thanks to @jensenpat (CW keyboard / MIDI controls, compression
meter gating, Windows MSVC runtime), @M7HNF-Ian (Spot Lines,
HiDPI gauge clipping, TCI crash on quit, SpotHub auto-reconnect),
@filemakers (connect-to-last-radio opt-out checkbox), @NF0T
(RADE TX policy naming + tests), @chibondking (live voltage gauge),
plus issue reporters @vu2cpl (TCI crash with full call stack),
@luigiverdicchio1-prog (SpotHub failed-reconnect repro), @LU5DX
and @rnash2 (spectrum amplitude scale issue — under investigation).

New features

CW keyboard + MIDI controls (#2361, #2391, jensenpat)

• Three new shared shortcut + MIDI actions: Trigger straight key,
  Trigger CW Left Paddle, Trigger CW Right Paddle. Same action IDs
  and display names for keyboard shortcuts and MIDI mappings (cwkey /
  cwdit / cwdah); MidiSettings migrates legacy dotted IDs
  (cw.key / cw.dit / cw.dah) on read.
• Straight key is a true momentary control: keyboard press + MIDI gate-on
  assert the netCW key path, release + gate-off release it. Paddles feed
  the local iambic keyer when running so sidetone and on-air timing stay
  aligned with WPM; falls back to a held-key path otherwise.
• Both paths now honor the radio's break_in setting fully — with
  break_in=1 (QSK), key edges trigger TX and break_in_delay holds
  the relay between elements; with break_in=0, keys are queued and the
  operator engages PTT manually (Space PTT, MOX, hardware PTT). The
  previous auto-PTT envelope masked break-in OFF and killed QSK hang
  time on release.
• New clickable red TX status badge in the status bar acts as an
  emergency transmit cancel — checks Multi-Flex ownership, clears all
  local CW state, forces sidetone key-up, and sends cw key 0 /
  cw ptt 0 / transmit tune 0 / xmit 0.
• Slider focus lease no longer blocks momentary CW shortcuts or Space
  PTT — clicking the CW delay slider previously froze J/K/L paddle
  keying and Space PTT for 2+ seconds while the lease's arrow-key
  capture timer expired.
• Pre-existing typo fix: J tile in the on-screen keyboard widget was
  bound to Qt::Key_I, so binding a shortcut to J in the editor
  selected I.

Quindar tones — Apollo-era K/BK on PTT (#2334, fixes #2262)

• Optional 2525 Hz "K" / 2475 Hz "BK" tones on PTT engage / disengage,
  modeled after Apollo CapCom audio. Lock-free DSP module wired between
  PC mic gain and the final TX limiter so tones are mixed into the
  outgoing audio. Local sidetone via a dedicated 48 kHz QAudioSink
  (mutually exclusive with CW mode at the mode level — Quindar and CW
  share the same sidetone bus).
• Added as the QUIN chip in the Final Output Stage panel of the
  Aetherial Audio Channel Strip with a frameless editor dialog
  (test-tone buttons + Done in the same row as the title bar).
• Disabled by default; opt-in via the chip toggle.

netCW keying fix + trace logging (#2336, fixes a long-tail of issues)

• Fixes netCW timing for both straight-key and iambic CW. Adds detailed
  aether.cw trace category logging across MIDI / keyboard input,
  netCW UDP scheduling, VITA stream/index details, and TCP fallback /
  backstop paths so future timing regressions are diagnosable from logs.

Spot Lines toggle in SpotHub (#2349, M7HNF-Ian)

• New "Spot Lines" toggle in the SpotHub Display settings draws vertical
  lines from the spectrum up to each spot label. Off during contests to
  reduce visual clutter; on for casual ops to keep label-to-frequency
  mapping legible at a glance.

Network Diagnostics live logs tab (#2333)

• New tab in the Network Diagnostics dialog with live tail of the same
  logs the diagnostics report references, scoped to the diagnostic
  categories (aether.connection, aether.dxcluster, aether.cw,
  etc.). Lets users diff what they're seeing against what was logged
  without leaving the dialog.

Connect-to-last-radio opt-out checkbox (#2390, filemakers)

• New "Connect to last radio on start up" checkbox on the connection
  dialog; defaults to ON so existing users keep current behavior. When
  unchecked, AetherSDR no longer auto-connects on startup, on
  broadcast-discovery, or on routed-radio probe — useful for operators
  who want to pick a radio manually each session. The dialog
  auto-launches at startup when opt-out is enabled so the user has a
  clear path to pick a radio.

Bug fixes

SpotHub auto-reconnect after failed connection attempt (#2394, M7HNF-Ian, fixes #2380)

• SpotHub (DX cluster / RBN) didn't automatically reconnect after a
  Wi-Fi drop or any failed connection attempt — Qt's QAbstractSocket
  only emits disconnected() on Connected → Unconnected transitions,
  so when the socket failed during ConnectingState (host blocked,
  refused, or timed out), the reconnect timer was never armed. Extracts
  a scheduleReconnect() helper called from all three failure paths
  (live drop, socket error, connect timeout) with guards against
  double-scheduling. A per-call epoch counter prevents stale timeouts
  from a previous attempt aborting a later successful one. Backoff
  sequence unchanged: 5 s → 10 s → 20 s → 40 s → 60 s.

TCI crash on quit when TciServer outlives RadioModel (#2386, M7HNF-Ian, fixes #2385)

• TciServer was constructed as a QObject child of MainWindow, so
  Qt deleted it during ~QWidget::deleteChildren() — which runs after
  MainWindow's value members (including m_radioModel) have already
  destructed. ~TciServer() → stop() → releaseDaxForTci() then
  dereferenced freed memory. EXC_BAD_ACCESS @ 0x38, 100% reproducible
  on quit when a radio was connected. Reported by VU2CPL with full call
  stack. Fixed by explicitly tearing down m_tciServer in
  ~MainWindow() after the audio thread is stopped but while
  m_radioModel is still alive, plus a belt-and-braces
  QPointer<RadioModel> so the existing null guards in
  releaseDaxForTci() catch any future regression automatically.

Waterfall unfreezes on radio interlock state, not MOX edge (#2368, fixes #1927)

• Waterfall freeze/unfreeze previously gated on the local MOX edge,
  which fired the instant the user released PTT — the radio kept
  streaming TX-contaminated tiles for the UNKEY_REQUESTED window, and
  those rows then took 10–23 s to scroll off the visible waterfall.
  Now driven by RadioModel::radioTransmittingChanged (interlock
  state=TRANSMITTING), so the freeze is held until the radio
  actually leaves TX. Multi-Flex bonus: any client TXing now triggers
  the freeze, not just our client.

Honor cw break_in for keyboard CW keying (#2391)

• RadioModel::sendCwKey and the iambic keyer's onPaddleEvent both
  unconditionally wrapped each key/squeeze in a cw ptt 1...cw ptt 0
  envelope. Made break-in OFF a no-op (auto-PTT forced TX anyway) and
  killed the radio's break_in_delay hang time with break-in ON
  (force-dropped PTT after every element). Stripped the auto-PTT in
  both paths so the radio's break-in setting decides TX behavior,
  matching SmartSDR semantics.

Spot list double-click switches mode (#2372, fixes #2298)

• Double-clicking a spot in the Spot List now switches the radio's
  mode along with the frequency. Previously only the frequency moved,
  leaving the user in the wrong mode for the spotted signal.

Spot trigger includes pan= for external CAT clients (#2369, fixes #2366)

• The spot click protocol now includes pan=<panId> so external CAT
  clients (N1MM Logger, etc.) consuming AetherSDR's spot triggers can
  route the click to the correct panadapter in multi-pan setups.

Compression meter gates on radio TX state (#2363, jensenpat)

• The TX compression meter now displays only while the radio reports
  state=TRANSMITTING. Previously it could read live during RX from
  stale interlock state, confusing operators about what compression
  was actually applied to their signal.

Voltage gauge label shows live radio voltage (#2362, chibondking)

• The voltage gauge label now reflects the live voltage value reported
  by the radio instead of the static "VOLTS" placeholder.

Minimal mode revert on macOS when entered while maximized (#2367, fixes #2365)

• Entering minimal mode while the window was already maximized on
  macOS would revert to a non-minimal layout immediately on toggle.
  Layout / state ordering corrected so the entry sticks regardless of
  the prior maximized state.

MidiControlManager: drop dead paramAction signal (#2370)

• Cleanup follow-up after #2336 introduced paramActionTrace —
  paramAction was still emitted but had zero connectors. Removed
  the orphan signal + matching declaration.

Infrastructure

DAX RX native pw_stream source on Linux (#2312, fixes #1008)

• DAX RX latency on Linux drops from ~400 ms → ~200 ms via a native
  PipeWire pw_stream source path, replacing the previous PulseAudio
  client. Brings DAX RX latency in line with macOS / Windows.

RADE TX policy naming + tests (#2353, NF0T, fixes #2343)

• Renames the RADE TX policy enum to align with the issue tracking
  language (HostedDaxBridge etc.) and adds unit tests covering each
  (reason, platform, mode) → (allowed, note) decision row.

HiDPI gauge clipping (#2346, M7HNF-Ian)

• HGauge tick labels and TxApplet value labels were clipping on HiDPI
  displays. Layout / paint regions updated to honor device-pixel ratio.

Windows portable ZIP includes MSVC runtime (#2364, jensenpat)

• Windows portable ZIP now bundles the MSVC runtime DLLs so the
  portable build runs on systems without Visual C++ Redistributable
  installed — matches the experience of the installer build.

Connection-panel slider focus lease split

• shortcutInputCaptured() was conflating "slider has focus and
  arrow-key lease is active" with "user is typing in a text field",
  blocking momentary CW shortcuts and Space PTT during slider drags.
  Now split into textInputCaptured() (text widgets only) and
  shortcutInputCaptured() (text + slider lease) so QShortcut
  dispatch keeps the arrow-key behaviour while momentary actions
  bypass the lease. Bundled with #2391.