Vertex Standard FT-1000MP manual Electronic Keyer Operation, ACS Auto Character Spacing

OPERATION

TRANSMITTING

Electronic Keyer Operation

The built-in electronic keyer offers two iambic modes and a mechanical “bug” keyer emulation. You will need to connect keyer paddles to one of the KEY jacks to use the keyer.

The keyer is set at the factory for iambic keying, in which one keyer paddle produces dots, and the other dashes. Squeezing both produces alternating dits and dahs. Menu selection 7-0allows choosing three keyer modes:

Iambic 1 - Iambic keyer with ACS (Auto-Character Spacing) disabled. Weighting is user-selectable via menu selections 7-1 & 7-2.

Iambic 2 - Iambic keyer with ACS enabled. Weight- ing is set via menu selections 7-1 & 7-2.

BUG - Emulates mechanical “bug” keyer (one paddle produces dits and the other is used to produce dahs manually (like a straight key)).

Once the transceiver has been set up for CW trans- mission as just described, you can activate the keyer with the [KEYER] pushbutton near the lower right corner of the front panel (its red LED should light). Now squeeze the paddles, and adjust the SPEED control for the de- sired sending speed (if you are using the bug simulator mode, don’t squeeze both paddles; just press the “dot” paddle).

If the dot:space and/or dash:space weighting are not to your preference, see menu selections 7-1and 7-2to configure your keyer’s settings.

You can use the keyer for both semi and full break- in keying, as described in the previous section.

ACS (Auto Character Spacing)

This feature improves your CW sending quality by ensuring the inter-character spacing of dots and dashes remains constant. Although dot/dash weighting is au- tomatically maintained at the desired ratio, the inter- character spacing can sometimes vary from operator to operator, and proportional spacing is sometimes not maintained. This does not present much of a problem during slow CW sending, but at higher speeds, the ef- fect is more pronounced and sometimes makes copy difficult.

ACS works on the principle that the spacing be- tween characters should be 3x the duration of the “dot.” If you utilize the standard 3:1 dash:dot ratio, this also happens to be the same duration of a “dash.” Main- taining this inter-character spacing is what prevents the sent characters “E” and “T,” for example, from merg- ing into what sounds like the character “A” (see illus- tration).

ACS is activated when keyer mode “Iambic 2” is selected from menu function 7-0. For memory keyer programming using the optional FH-1Keypad, you should always use keyer mode Iambic 2 during mes- sage programming, although you can switch back to Iambic 1 after the messages are loaded, if Iambic 1 is more comfortable for you.

CW Straight Key and Paddle Connections

MARK-V FT-1000MP Operating Manual page 55