New USB Cables function not working for Acom 600S and 04AT tuner

Joe Bales

Using the most recent version of SmartSDR that shows the following new features - "USB Cables Adds new CAT Commands: Three new CAT commands (MD, RX, TX) have been added to the USB Cable feature to support ACOM600s and Tuner 04AT."    

The new MD command does not appear to be working - I assume the new commands were put in to enable the auto tune function of the 04AT tuner when using an Acom 600 or 1200 amp by pushing the TUNE button on the Amp front panel.  I received an email back from Val at Acom (he is very helpful) stating that he thought Flex was making a change to make this happen.  My assumptions may be wrong but I am assuming that the new CAT commands were put in place to make this happen.  If I am wrong can the purpose of the 3 new commands for the Acom products be explained.

Erik SM0JCA

Hi, I have a 6400M with the Acom 1200S and tuner 04AT and the autotuning is not working. My FTDI USB cable is working 100% and manual tuning as per the manual with Acom CAT [off] is tunig perfectly. With the CAT returned to [RS232] on the Acom the tuner is following band changes and frequency changes fully. Today I got this answer from Acom: "This is a known issue. Flex uses Kenwood CAT protocol. But unlike the other transceivers on the market, its RTTY mode is AFSK only and not FSK. This is a big difference because the FSK is a continuous carrier and the AFSK is like the SSB - no carrier at all.  When the Tune button is pushed, the amplifier commands the radio to TX RTTY as a continuous carrier is needed for the tuning. But the Flex does not do it and the amplifier can only wait for the time out. This is the reason the Flex users to have to tune up manually." 

Once I have maually tuned the antennas on the different bands I switch back to CAT control on the Acom linear 1200S and everything works fine.

Maybe Flex Radio can do some magic on this problem to have the Acom tuner automatic as intended.
73 de Erik

Luis

Hi Erik, I just posted this problem to my group. Now I have seen your message. That helps me alot! Thanks for that!! My additional problem is that after the timeout via the CAT interface, the frequency goes to zero and the Flex 6400 or the Smart SDR software freezes. Do you know that, too? I can't use my 6400 at the moment :-( Best 73 de Lutz DL4FCJ