The beautiful Swan River

Freshwater Bay, with the city of Perth in the distance.

A New Microphone for the QMX

With the advent of SSB on the QMX it was time for a better mic option. Hans, on his QRP-Labs website, refers to Adam K6ARK who has designed a nice miniature 3D printed microphone including PTT button.  I don't have a 3D printer (yet) so I put out a call to any club members with one, and Brian, VK8BDM, responded. I sent him the link to the design for said mic and within days he dropped one (actually four) off to me.   Brian did an excellent job with the printing as you can see in the images below.  Note, the printer used was a Bambu X1. 

The rest of the parts were sourced and two mics were constructed.

 

 

The QMX has a lot of test options built into it so it was easy to check that the mics were working as intended. All you need to do is connect your QMX to your PC via the USB-C connector, open PuTTY and entered the terminal application mode (8.2).  Go to 'Hardware Test' and scroll down to the 'Microphone Test' (8.6.9).  Press 'R' to run the test and you should see something resembling the video below, when you speak at a normal level into the Mic.  Gain can be adjusted using the + and - buttons on the PC keyboard and Ctrl-Q will quit the test.

The references in the (brackets) relate to the QMX operating manual (firmware 1_02_002).

CATSync for WebSDRs

 

As the website states, CATSync is a tool that allows you to synchronise public WebSDR receivers with your real rig connected via CAT control to your computer. It supports the classical WebSDR, Kiwi SDR as well as Open Web RX.

As I have reiterated, there are some great developers out there that have contributed to AR in many different way, and software is one of them. I haven't tried this program yet but I will, as I am still working on the CW and this would allow me to use a remote receiver to receive some of the signals that are down in the noise from my home QTH and even compare them.  Whilst I would also be able to send CW from the attached rig.  Synchronising the two receivers would provide an extra string to the bow.

I'll post an update, when I've given it a workout. 

 

Morsle - the daily Morse Code challenge

 

Yet one more CW practice tool. this one can be found at morsle.fun.  Yes, its a little like Wordle but helps with your CW receiving.  

Better-ICR for practicing you CW reception

I'm still plugging away at my CW.  There are good day and bad day, I guess that is to be expected. One of the keys to good CW reception is what is called 'Instant Character Recognition', or ICR for short. I have previously posted about this and included some websites that have been helpful.  

There is however, a new kid on the block (or maybe I have just stumbled across it).  It is called 'Better-ICR' and it can be found at https://better-icr.herokuapp.com/.  Firstly, you enter the sound card setting and then press 'Start' it will send a character, and then time how long it takes for you to say the character out aloud.  Once you have done that you then enter the character using the keyboard. 

So it is, hear => speak => type, and then repeat.

It will then produce a graphical representation of your response time and accuracy, see below. 

The aim is to get your response times down below the dotted green line which is set at 600 ms.

For a full explanation you can read the 'Student’s Guide to Using Better-ICR' by John Merkel AJ1DM, published on the May 9, 2025.  So I suspect that it is a new website (or at least recently updated)!

This is a good way of checking progress (or regress, for that matter).   I think I will stick with this site to see if I can make some headway.

Enjoy!