Steve,
Your comments on weight control have educated me. I always assumed that
weight control meant the ratio of the length of a dash to a dot. The morse
code generating programs I have written these many years, starting with the
C-64 back in '83, all identified weight control as the ratio of the length
(in millisecs.) of a dash relative to the length of a dot. My timing
constants kept the length of a dot constant with respect to the length of
the key-up time following a dot. I varied the length of the dash by
changing its time constant, thus breaking away from the desired 3 to 1 dash
to dot ratio.
Now I suppose I will have to go back and dig out all that old source code
and change it.
With some effort because of the clutter on my desk, I was able to plug my
keyer into the keyer line on the back of my Omni. Varying the "weight"
control did seem to vary the weight of both the dot and dash, making them
progressively lighter as the weight decreased below 1.00, and progressively
heavier as it went above 1.00.
My Logikey keyer has the ability to adjust keying weight. Their manual has
a blurb about weight, which includes the following sentence. "Weight is
the duty cycle of a continuous string of dots, which is 50% for perfect
code." Changing the weight on the Logikey produces the same result as on
Omni VI. In neither case, as far as I can tell, does the length of a dash,
relative to the length of a dot, stretch out.
Thanks for bringing this up. I don't hope to change all of those dusty old
programs, but perhaps I can change my most recent one. I think I will keep
both settings, but call the stretched dash something else, like the
"vibrosimulator" feature.
Well, back to listening for rare DX.
Pete.
At 12:59 1999/01/12 -0500, Steve Ellington wrote:
>
>Why do some internal keyers allow control of the dash to dot ratio and
>they bill it as a "weight control"? Facts are, the dot/dash ratio is
>supposed to always be 1:3. They teach that in code class. There is a big
>difference in that and weighting. Weight has to do with the length of both
>characters and the ratio stays constant.
>
>Being able to change weight is important. Some rigs tend to chop the
>characters such as the IC-706 but when you look a the keyer's menu, there
>is nothing to change by ratio whichis of no use.
>
>What I'm wondering is this: Did the design engineers suddenly
>misunderstand what cw is about or are they just not capable of designing
>the keyer correctly?
>
>I built a little curtis chipped keyer into my TKIT 1340 and it has a real
>weight control. Ratio is fixed as it should be. What's the dea;?
>
>N4LQ
>
Amateur Radio Station NO2D
Pewee Valley, KY
http://members.iglou.com/pinskeep
Ask about my free Linux Morse401.tgz program
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