[Central-Electronics] 100V operation ?

[Eugene Hertz]

Hello all,

I am getting my very first HF station together using a 100V and collins 51J4.  Everything is coming together rather nicely.  I have one really-really-really haunting question about the operation of the 100V, so I am reaching out to you 100V operators out there.

In an ideal world, I would love to use my mic and the PTT switch on the mic (D104) and set the 100V on PTT mode to use phone modes.  Also in an ideal world, I would love to plug my cw key into the CW-VOX jack, such that when I put the 100V in VOX mode and I begin sending, the first dit or dah starts sending until I stop sending then the station switches over to receive automatically.

It seems that as long as I have a plug plugged into the cw-vox jack, I cannot perform any phone modes whatsoever.  I can key the mic, and the TR relay will fire, but there is no emissions.  Seems that in order for me to do any phone modes, I need to unplug the key from the rear of the 100V.

So I thought to myself, "self?" maybe I simply need to use one of the other key jacks. I guess if I cant do cw-vox and phone modes without disconnecting things, perhaps I can find a mode that simply forces me to switch to MANUAL mode and then use my key--but still allow me to use phone modes without pulling the 100V out from away from the wall to connect/disconnect the key.  But I could not find any usable CW key input jack. When I use the Cw-PTT jack the TR relay is going nuts firing with every dit and dah. This doesn't seem good. The only other option is CW-STBY. I tried this. While this allows phone operation, its behavior seems odd. The PTT mode does not key the TR relay, the VOX mode seems to do close to what I want (does key the TR relay) but it seems I cannot increase the release time enough for what I would want (at 5wpm, I need a good, long release time)

So, whats the question? Can all you experienced 100V operators out there tell me how you have things set up? And what kinds of release times do you set for CW-Vox-type operation? Can this time be increased? I don't really need QSK.

thanks for the bandwidth (and rambling)
Eugene