New 'remote CW' program

John Warburton G4IRN

I've tried several remote CW solutions with my Flex but not found anything, until now, that ticks all my boxes.

The usual problems are

a) The sidetone isn’t available on the same audio channel as the Flex or
b) The CW is interpreted locally, and ASCII characters are sent to the radio side for transmission. The problem with this is that hand-sent CW needs to be perfect, otherwise the sent CW won’t replicate what is actually keyed. It sends what ‘it thinks’ was keyed.

I’ve recently come across a Windows program that get’s over both these issues, and since it has a client/server architecture will support multiple users.

Remote CW Keyer by DL4YHF measures the actual key-down and key-down timings; it then sends the time information to the radio-side to recreate the characters for transmission. Hence, whatever is keyed, is sent.

The link is here: https://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/Remote_CW_Keyer/Remote_CW_Keyer.htm


I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, including the All Asia contest. The program runs in ‘client’ mode on my PC at home, along with SSDR; side-tone is output on the same sound device as the Flex.

The key (straight or paddle) plugs into the control-side serial port (FTDI USB adapter is OK) via a small circuit – it’s easy to build and encapsulate the components in the 9-way serial plug. At the radio side, a Windows PC runs the DL4YHF program in ‘server’ mode and there is a cable from the PC’s serial port (or FTDI USB ) to the Flex CW socket; again, with a small circuit built into the serial port connector.

All the information is on the author’s website. I have no connection, just a happy user.

I’ve gone one step further by integrating the above solution with a control-side Winkey unit. My logging program connects to the physical WK unit and the iambic key plugs into it. The output from the Winkey unit is input to the serial port on my control-side PC as a ‘straight key’ for DL4YHF’s program to handle the remote connection. The Flex SSDR sidetone is switched off so I listen to the DL4YHF sidetone – both the contest macros and my keyer are there, it works great. Yes I could use the SSDR Winkey emulator but the experience with a physical WK unit is much improved.

I’ve documented my solution here:

https://www.g4irn.com/home/articles-information/remote-station-cw-operation

73 John G4IRN