[Ham-Mac] Black Cat CW Keyer

[John WA2OOB]

Hello Chris-

Thank you for continuing to develop amateur radio applications for the
MacOS. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

I am running MacOS 9.2.2 on a Beige G3/266 640MB machine.

Some thoughts re: Black Cat CW Keyer beta which I just tried out:

1) It would be very handy to be able to 'cut' or capture text from the
main window, and to be able to 'paste' it back to the input line, to
avoid having to retype words that may have already been sent.
This feature should also allow for the pasting of text into other
applications, such as logging programs... i.e., you've already typed the
QSO's call, name, location, contest exchange, etc, these items could be
entered elsewhere without retyping. It should also allow the pasting of
text from existing files into the input line.

2) The Macro Window did NOT not allow the creation of macros at first.
When the editing window was utilized, and 'OK' was pressed... nothing
happened! I then created a Macro.txt test file in Simpletext, which did
show up in the Macro window. I was able to then utilize, edit, and add
to these macros from within the Macro window. It appears as though the
program is expecting the file Macro.txt to already exist- but there was
none in the original download. Once Macro.txt was created, all was as
expected.

3) I agree with the other writer that spacing/weighting for the CW
stream would be helpful.

4) I also agree that a message 'interrupt/abort' (Command-Period)
command would be useful!

4) I could not seem to utilize prosigns such as SK BT etc. Perhaps
utilizing an unused character such as the '_' (underline) preceding the
pair of characters to be linked, would be advantageous, and not confuse
the use of the '/' (backslash).

4) This is perhaps a procedural issue, since the application produces
audio, rather than a keying output: As recommended, we are basically
generating modulated CW (MCW) by driving the mic input of an SSB
transmitter with the CW 'tone' produced by the program. I will research
current FCC regs, but I was under the impression that MCW is only
allowed on 6 meters and above? Certainly, this could be used in the
phone portions of the bands, but I would doubt the legality of such
emissions in the RTTY/data/CW portions of the HF bands. Perhaps someone
can clarify this point? If so, perhaps one of us can design a simple
circuit that allows the audio feed to drive a logic-level keying
circuit. This might be a comparator that drives an inverter so that when
audio is present, the output goes low (to ground)... this could key the
rig, or a relay could be added for rigs that require the isolation.

I hope this information is helpful. Thank you again for your keeping
Macs at the top 10% of the computing world!

73,

John WA2OOB

---

Chris Smolinski wrote:

> I've released the first beta of Black Cat CW Keyer, a morse code
> keying program. OS X and Classic versions available. Visit
> http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/bccwkeyer.html for detials.
>
> 73
> Chris
> N3JLY
>
> --
>
> ---
> Chris Smolinski
> Black Cat Systems
> http://www.blackcatsystems.com
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