QCX CW decoding

One of the aspects I’ve been surprised and impressed with is the quality of the CW decoding while sending. While playing with the onboard microswitch as a morse key I felt I needed to emphasise the length of the dashes for the encoder to resolve my sending. So I was pleasantly surprised at how well the decoding worked with a straight key and a sideswiper. These keys didn’t seem to impose the same timing expectations as the microswitch – which is odd because I believe they are wired across each other.

In any case, the decoder was able to present a pretty reliable rendition of what I had sent with both keys. Other systems I’m familiar with are only successful with keyer generated CW sent on a paddle. I’ve only seen sideswiper CW decoded by the Begali CW Machine which is a bit more expensive than the QCX but essentially built around a tiny AVR Butterfly.

Decoding in receiving on the QCX sometimes seems to be jeopardised by noise and static, although some quite clear and strong signals occasionally would not be decoded. I need to experiment more to do it justice and check what impact the speed adjustment has because ultimately it all must be using the same microcontroller code to decode the morse, sending or receiving.