Electronic Signature On Cover Letter

KISS for SO2R

In a previous post I shared the preliminary design for a controller SO2R (Single Operator 2 Radios) general purpose. In making this design a series of mistakes I made. The first and was on the way conceptual the contest logging program I used ( AATest ) handled the SO2R. Assumed that via OmniRig and was not well, so now I know it makes much sense technically but it remains clear that you can not build a station around components so poorly documented and supported as this contest logger.

The second mistake I made was to make a project too complex for a first attempt, basically needed a driver for CW SO2R and made a multimode (although there is no opportunity on the horizon in providing use of anything other than CW .) The result was a prototype very complicated, with lots of wiring, fitting and very difficult to walk (which I finally managed shortly before the ARRL DX Contest International). Only to run into the problem before and was not working as it should from the problems of understanding as they used the AATest. Literally

during the competition I built a prototype of a controller much simpler but the truth showed strong engineering approach called KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid! Keep it simple stupid). Indeed

signal only has the PTT / Key from the lines RTS / DTR serial port and a control signal RIG1/RIG2 used to toggle whether the above go to a team or the other. The design is trivially simple, the signal from RS-232 serial port is set to its level by two NPN transistors, a third signal is used to commute before rig1 rig2 through a relay or two investors.

Moreover a simple audio connection route the sound output from rig1 the left ear while the rig2 makes the right ear. The latter is a simple "Y" can be used either directly from the output of the transceiver and the output of the sound card after processing the signals digitally.

To further simplify use two soundcards, one for and one for rig1 rig2, running an instance of the filter ( CwGet ) on each plate simultaneously.

The simplicity of design has a price, it is very difficult to equalize the output volume of the transceivers (or filter) for the volume on one ear does not predominate over the other.

The other problem is that it is easy to mute a channel (requires a few clicks on the PC) and to not take practice with the technique is not easy to listen to two QSO simultaneously, at least I could not in the first use.

However if I used it to follow two run simultaneously when operated on for a while "stealing" S & P of which were S & P and also throughout the contest to keep the runs coming on very strong stations.