Keyer is a little odd

[K5DN]

The keyer on my new RRC's works ok, but behaves a bit funky compared to my other keyers.  When I hit dit a little too soon after a dah, it is ignored; no dit occurs.  My Icom, mfj, and k1el keyers don't do this.  Maybe I have just picked up a bad habit.

Has anyone else noticed this?  I will eventually have to re-train the fist or try to hook up a separate keyer somehow.

Bob

[K5DN]

I should have added that the above occurred in mode A.  I tried the other modes, but have problems with all of them.  The old squeeze mode seems to do the same thing. Mode B has the opposite problem of adding in extra dits sometimes; I guess this is expected with someone not accustomed to mode B.  I am now using a single paddle key; haven't tried it yet with the dual paddle.

Is there a way to run an external keyer and retain the the buffering and timing features?  It seems like a straight key mode is needed to do this.

[sm3ccm]

I'm using a dual paddle and have the same problem. For me it looks like that there is a problem
with the dot and dash memories. C will often be a K, F will be a U a.s.o. Missing a dot after a dash before a word space. I don't have this problem with ICOM, AEA and MFJ keyers.

73 de Lars

[K5DN]

Thanks for your comments Lars.  I thought maybe it was just my fumble fingers.

Can Microbit please look into this problem?  It is very difficult for me to use as it is.

K5DN, Bob

[K5DN]

I found that adding a 0.47 uF cap from the paddle dit terminal to gnd greatly reduces the chance for a dropped dit.  But it may also increase likelihood of an extra dit at the end of a string.

I also found the the instructions for connecting an external keyer are right there in the manual in plain english; should have RTFM.  I think I will be happy with this solution, and microbit may have more important issues than tweaking the keyer.

Thanks,
Bob

[Jan (Microbit)]

I also found the the instructions for connecting an external keyer are right there in the manual in plain english; should have RTFM.  I think I will be happy with this solution, and microbit may have more important issues than tweaking the keyer.

ROFL! 

[sm3ccm]

I will try the 0.47uF cap and see what it does. However it shouldn't be difficult to look into the dropping dit case and see what see what the problem is, user, internet or program.
 

73 de Lars

[DL7AV]

Yes, Can Microbit please look into this problem? There have been 5 change requests about that in the Forum, subject "CW Keying", on Aug 10th till Aug 23rd. I would like to use mode B with less unwanted dots generated. Thank you,73
Thomas  DL7AV

[K5DN]

I have my external keyer connected and working well.  I am happily working dx with my remote station almost as if it were at home.  Remoterig is a very nice product.

However, I have one remaining problem:  The sidetone signal has a rather mushy sound, caused by slow rise and fall times of the envelope.  It is slow enough to effect my ability to send accurate cw.  I can do a better job listening to the keyer's sidetone, which of course does come through my headphones.

I looked at the signal with a scope and see a trapezoidal envelope with about 15 msec rise/fall.  It should be probably 3-5 ms.  If I could fix it with a hardware change I would be happy to do that, but I expect it is formed in the processor.

Thanks,
Bob

[sm2o]

The sidetone envelope and rise time is formed by the processor and is a copy of some keyer we tested.

With shorter rise time it sounds terrible at slower speeds, I guess the best would be if the rise time is shortened propotional to the speed, today it's same at all speeds.

We will check what can be done.

About missing dits ? It's not easy to know what should be done. We have used keyer code available on the net.
If anybody could say how it should be changed to make it better we will do it ?

73 de mike