The Mistake Operators Keep Making

 I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen an operator get burned by an update. It’s happened to me more than once as well—often enough that I finally adopted a new philosophy several years ago.

The scenario is usually the same. A shiny new firmware or software update drops right before an event you’re supporting or participating in. You install it, thinking you’re being responsible… only to discover that something is broken. A feature no longer works, menus have been rearranged, or behavior has subtly changed. Suddenly your radio, Meshtastic device, or computer is in a less-than-ideal state—and that’s on a good day.

To be fair to programmers, I don’t believe there’s ever any malicious intent behind these updates. As a programmer myself, I know how easily things can slip through the cracks. No matter how much testing is done, there’s always an edge case that wasn’t anticipated.

Which brings me back to the philosophy I adopted years ago: the two-week freeze.

For the two weeks leading up to an event, nothing—and I mean nothing—gets updated. No system updates. No software updates. No firmware updates. Don’t touch the radios. Don’t touch the computers. The only exception is programming a new frequency into a rig, and even then, only if it’s absolutely required for the event.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.