On Jan 25, 2018, at 1:33 PM, Michael Babineau <mbabineau.ve3wmb@...> wrote:

How about just transmitting a carrier using CW ?  My BITX40 has a TUNE button wired in parallel to the KEY jack for just this purpose.

BITX QSO Afternoon/Evening, Sunday, January 28, 3PM & 7PM Local Time, 7277 kHz in North America, 7177 kHz elsewhere.

While not the greatest band conditions, the afternoon session last week was better than the evening session! So hopefully, we can try both times again this week.

Join us as we make contacts from BITX40 to BITX40 on 7.277 MHz in 40 meters!

This is a worldwide event for BITX40 stations starting at 7pm in each time zone. To participate, call CQ BITX on Sunday, starting at 3PM and/or 7PM your local time. The BITX QSO Night continues through the evening and conditions usually improve after sunset, so it is worthwhile to participate later in the evening.

Suggested Best Operating Practices:

Work at QRP power levels unless conditions require more power.
Call and listen for CQ BITX on the hour and every quarter hour.
It is helpful if you call CQ BITX with your callsign, name and location. 
Repeat your callsign a number of times during your CQ BITX and during QSO's.
Start a QSO by confirming the callsign, location, name and signal report of the other operator.
Say the callsign, name and location of the other operator so others can hear.
If the frequency is busy, avoid long conversations.
After your initial QSO is complete, ask if there are any other stations who would like to contact.

Report your QSO's, discuss propagation, noise, signal reports, audio reports, antenna type, etc. in this thread.

This is an undirected, scheduled event.  The BITX QSO Night relies on you to call CQ BITX to initiate contacts with other stations, so warm up that final and transmit a few calls on Sunday evening.  Talk to you then!
--
John - WA2FZW

<A713F7E8_C6D7_471C_A728_141FF07B8525.jpeg><16F70DE6_396F_47AA_9F38_CC4CC3B8E7A8.jpeg><9B9D5551_AC32_441C_B1E6_A5C862D29063.jpeg><70C5A1C8_DB48_4535_B786_60FE4E8A568F.jpeg>Yesterday I installed everything and it worked fine...
Today I put everything in the box and decided to use the case as heatsink. I put insulator and thermal silicone. Ok i turned it on and there has been a little explosion and smoke in the area of the transistors. I don’t see anything blown... 
maybe i blew the transitors? How can I check? I did tested that there was no continuity between the metal thing of the transistor and the screw! 
Hell i hate this!

now after removing the transistors from the case it turns on normally 

I incorporated the keyer code from W0EB and W2CTX into my personal software build, but being determined to save the last analog input for S/power metering, kept the single input that detects three levels (four originally, but I don't care much about straight keying so I left that out for now). Some of the errors I've experienced and others have reported with the single line seemed to me consistent with the ADC deciding the state was "both" instead of "dit", for example an 'I' becoming an 'N' while the dit paddle is held closed. Looking at the nominal voltage levels with the provided resistors, I saw that there was only around 0.22 volts between the "dit" and "both" levels (1.60 vs 1.38 V). On the other hand, there is 1.8 volts between "dit" and "dah". Errors due to fluctuations would be much more likely between "dit" and "both".

Hoping to improve the situation, I did a little numerical study of the divider circuit. It turned out that there is really no area in the 2D "space" of possible resistor values that gives an ideal result (large equal intervals between both pairs of levels), but it is possible at least to increase the dit-both spacing significantly, at the expense of the dit-dah spacing. In the end I replaced the 2.2k resistor with a 5.1k one. Now the nominal levels are 3.4 V for "dah", 2.6 V for "dit", and 2.1 V for "both". I made an educated estimate of what the boundary ADC values should be and put them into my customized paddle-latch function.

The results so far are favorable. I have sent a fair amount of practice code (I also added a "practice" mode that only plays the sidetone) at speeds up to 25 wpm, and have detected no errors that were not caused by my fist. The iambic action seems flawless and smooth. I might actually get good at sending iambic style someday...

73, John AD0RW