NM5DV Softrock SDR Blog

So I got the 20 meter paf fixed backup and was pleased with that.

I reconnected the 30 meter lpf and tested out some transmission on 30meters last night and determined that the harmonics were decently attenuated.

So I figured since im stuck at one watt until my toroids for the Doug DeMaw 15 watt amp show up I’ve got the makings of a perfect qrss rig. I own a k1el keyer that I have installed in my Small Wonders Labs sw+20. Unfortunately its pretty well integrated into that rig enclosure. So add to the list of projects a separate power switch and keyer output for the k1el on that rig. So for now I just disconnected it from the sw+ and tapped into it using some alligator clips.

The problem I was having with the k1el is that when it keys it just drops the connection to the ground. The softrock rxtx v6.3 uses 12 v from the common to the dit and dah. So as stated in my earlier post you cant have any grounding of this circuit or it doesn’t work and could fry something…

So I thought for a while and seeing as how it was 2 am I decided that building some sort of logic flip flop high state low state thing was probably not going to happen very quickly. So being the eager beaver I realized that this is the perfect application for a relay. Luckily the parts kit from n8wwm contained a four position relay. It was bit overkill but it should work.

I quickly got to work setting everything up. A pretty basic setup to run 12v to one side of the relay and the keyer output from the k1el to the other side. then I just alligatored the common of the softrock to one side of the relay switch and the other side of the relay switch to the dah of the softrock. So when the k1el keys up it closes the relay and closes the switch from common and dah on the softrock. brilliant! Noisy but brilliant.

The next step was to configure the software. So using rocky (rocky is the best for transmitting cw and psk) you have to go into the cw console under view and set it to be straight key.

Then you have to set the mode to cw and under tx pull down set vox. This is basically vox for the cw paddle.

Hook the key up to the k1el keyer and test it out .. its kind of distracting to key while the relay is also keying so you should turn on the side tone on the k1el if you are going to actually operate like this (command and .- a).

Now we need to just set the k1el to go into beacon mode. Easy enough (kind of) command till you hear r then send l (.-..) then push the button you want to program. My beacon command is this for now but somethings not quite right (as its not looping) /b99 /q0 nm5dv nm5dv sdr 1 watt dm75 nm5dv . That sets it to repeat every 90 seconds and sets it into qrss mode 3 second dit.

Ill try and fix the looping by changing it to /b99 /10 nm5dv/2 and then programming button 2 to be nm5dv 1 watt sdr dm75 nm5dv.

So im going to work on a circuit to replace the relay with some transistors and get the enclosure and power switch / keyer cleaned up a bit. But for now the beacon is pretty close to being on the air as a real beacon / mept

good luck 73s de nm5dv.