But I wanted to actually get on the air. I've been practicing my Morse a bit lately, so thought I should just see what I could throw together.
The things I had that were is somewhat working state (or could be made to be...) were my direct conversion receiver and a NS-40 CW transmitter. First thing was I needed a way to connect them. I wanted to make something with a relay and have the Arduino I was using for VFO switch it. But I didn't have any lying around I could find. But I did find a DPDT switch, so I made a little thing in a nuts tin
When the switch is in the transmit position, the transmitter is routed into the dummy load (I didn't want risk accidentally powering it with no load). It doesn't give good isolation - the receiver screams when I key - but seems to somewhat do the trick. Here it is spread over the table:
I tried to send with my homemade key but wasn't getting any responses. I wasn't sure if it was my antenna setup, the low power, or my bad sending. So I thought I should try using a keyer. I found the k3ng Arduino keyer which looked like it would do the trick.
It went together pretty quickly. The ns-40 had some interface circuits on the site that worked well. Only thing is the circuit works on active being low, so I had to switch high and low in the software.
It was getting late, so I wanted to just do a quick test. The keyer has a CW keyboard mode, so I sent CQ from there. I didn't get anyone coming back. But I did get spots on the reverse beacon network!
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