New 6600 owner/Maestro Needed

PaulB

Hello!
I just purchased a brand spakin' new 6600 (ouch). One of the reasons I went flex was for the excellent remote opportunity. I am currently deployed with the U.S. Army in Africa for 9 months, and would love to operate my radio remotely, but by the time they have the Maestro in stock, my trip will be done. If ANYONE has a Maestro B they were even possibly thinking about selling (maybe because you have a 6600B and want the new Maestro when it comes out) then please drop me a line. I'd be willing to pay full price for a B model now. Thank you.
Paul B
N7JDI

KD0RC

Hi Paul, congratulations on your new 6600!

If you have a PC or Mac computer, you can operate remotely without the Maestro. You would use SmartLink to make the connection over the Internet.

PaulB

That's not my goal, Len. I want to operate CW, and need that interface and all the buffering, etc. But yes, I am familiar with that process. Thanks for the response!

KD0RC

HI Paul, if you don't come up with a Maestro in the short term, you can build a very simple interface to allow remote CW keying. You will need an external keyer (or at least a side-tone generator and a straight-key), but it works pretty well. Here is a link to the Remote Keyer Interface IO group if you are interested in giving it a try:

[email protected] | Topics

PaulB

Thanks, Len. Looks like a cool project. Problem is, I'm deployed military and do not have access to my bench and all my tools :( Another issue I have that the Maestro deals with quite will is latency. We have about a 300ms delay from here to my QTH, and dropped packets now and then. Flex does a good job filling those packets after a delay buffer.

Mike-VA3MW

Paul

You can use an Ipad, PC or Macbook remotely if you like. Same features.

Mike

PaulB

Thanks Mike....but my goal for the Maestro was to take advantage of the I/O and for CW operations. I really like the way the system can buffer the CW to meet the needs of my substandard internet connection from 10,000 miles away ;)

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Paul

You can do that with CW on a PC with the use of a USB WinKeyer and a helper application on the PC called WKFlex.

https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8024988/wkflex-cw-remote-with-smartsdr-and-winkeyer

PaulB

Thanks Mike! Any suggestions on which winkeyer to get? They make the mini and the standard, but I really need something travel related. I saw you mention one on your desk in a video (that was blue and pretty small I believe) Would this be a winkeyer emulator that would work, and where did you get it?

Mike-VA3MW

I would talk to the WKFlex author.