FSK / CW interface information

[KC1SA]

As discussed at last night's business meeting, W3YY makes a very good interface from your PC to your RIG that supports just about any radio. I purchased one of these un-assembed about two years ago and it works great with my Kenwood TS-2000. Here is the website for this interface board: http://w3yy.com/fsk.htm

You can probably build this even cheaper on a piece of perf board. The six MOVs, resistors and three OPTOs on the board probably sum total to about $5, so for probably 6 dollars you can build this up yourself, but having a nice PCB makes a very neat tidy job.

Easy Digi is the other useful interface for isolating audio from your RIG to you PC, good for JT modes and RTTY/PSK if your RIG doesn't support true FSK mode of operation. This interface has only one OPTO channel but it diode OR's RTS and DTR to provide PTT to your rig. This works for JT software but not if you want to do CW work. The guy sells these on ebay as kits for about $10 or completely built up in a box.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/easy-digi

Neither until requires powering. If you don't have RS-232 jacks on your PC you'll need to purchase RS-232 to USB dongles. Purchase only those devices with the FTTI chipset, one with the Prolific chipset generally don't works with Windows 7 (they work fine with XP), so buy the FTTI versions. These can be found on ebay or Amazon for under $10.

And if you don't want to blow-up your PC's sound card you can purchase an audio USB dongle for nearly nothing on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SD-CM-UAUD-Ad...B001MSS6CS

I use both of these units, the Easy Digi is only used for isolation of the audio stream. With these two interfaces my Kenwood supports; SSTV, JT, RTTY, CW and of course SSB.

73,

Steve