[Ham-Mac] Black Cat CW Keyer

[Chris Smolinski]

>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.

Good suggestion.

>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.

Thanks for the bug report.

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

I've shortened the spacing, it sounds better now, but perhaps someone 
with a better "CW ear" than myself can make sure, when I issue the 
next version.

>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).

It seems to work here, you need to use a \ (reverse slash like on 
MSDOS).  Doh! There's the problem, I typed the / slash in the docs. 
I'll call that a word processing bug ;-)

>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

I'm not sure 100% what the FCC regs are. However, if you operate in 
SSB mode, and inject a single frequency into your transmitter, you 
will produce a single RF output frequency, indistinguishable from 
that produced by a CW transmitter with the key down. Of course I 
understand that government regulations are not always concerned with 
reality ;-)

>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.

Here is my thought:

Take the audio output, rectify it, then use that signal to drive an 
opto-isolator, which can then control the PTT of the rig. If you have 
an older rig that needs a beefier PTT signal, you could use the opto 
to drive a relay. I'll try to rig something up when the power comes 
back on and I can warm up the soldering iron.

-- 

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Chris Smolinski
Black Cat Systems
http://www.blackcatsystems.com