Voice & CW Keyer Keyer - Dual Mode

The need for this feature became evident during the WRTC contest where, although the CW keying was done mainly from the PC, the operator sometimes needed to send CW with the paddle that is connected to the Super Combo Keyer (SCK) and after doing that to launch an immediate CQ or QRZ? directly from the keyer and not the PC.

The Super Combo Keyer has the feature that the CW keying still works from the paddle even if the Mode switch on the front panel is set to "Voice".  When moving multipliers between modes and bands it sometimes happened that the SCK was in "Voice" mode and the Voice instead of the CW message was selected to start a CQ, give QSL info or ask QRZ?.

The "Dual Mode" feature has been added to eliminate the frustration of having to change the SCK mode switch when changing modes on the radio.  In the Dual Mode, which can be activated when in "Voice" mode by pressing MSG 2 & 3 together, messages 1 to 4 will remain Voice messages while MSG 5 and MSG 6 will be CW messages as it has been pre-recorded.

The operator must set CW MSG 5 & 6 to the most used messages whenever he has used or intends using the paddle connected to the SCK.  The voice messages MSG 1 - 4 are still controlled from the PC logging program or manually by pressing MSG 1 - 4. 

The advantage of this is not having to change the Mode switch on the SCK during a mixed mode contest and the feature can also be used by a second-op in a multi-single environment to pounce on  multipliers in both modes with reduced interference to the main operator while only sharing one SCK.

When the Dual Mode is selected by pressing MSG 2 & 3 in Voice mode the RECORD LED will flash "D" in Morse code.  When 2 & 3 is pressed again "M" will flash indicating "Manual" mode.  The SCK will also flash "M" and revert to the standard manually selected mode when the mode toggle switch is moved to CW.

Last updated 15 January 2001 by [email protected]

Return to main page: Super Combo Keyer