Details
Category: Amateur Radio

Add remote CW capabilities to the good old famous Junkers Key.

Motivation

With the availability of high-speed internet, it is very easy to remote your home amateur radio station as described in section 24.4 of the ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications 2020. As a fan of the famous Junkers key I could not find a solution which will allow for remote operation of this device. I've seen several solutions with Rig control software allowing to enter text which then will be sent in CW mode by the Rig, CW generated by the computer. For a CW fan like me this sounds unathletic no longer needing a key. As I could not find a solution which would allow me to remotely use my Junkers key, I started this project.

Requirements

On the remote location, allow to connect the Junkers key. The home station has a female connector for a Key, the solution has to provide the remote signal the same way as if I would connect the Junkers key directly to that station. Transmission of CW over the internet, the solution has to support lower WAN speeds with higher latency.

Solution

The solution uses RS232 Serial ports on Windows computers at the remote location and the home station location to connect the Junkers key at the remote location and the remote computer to the CW connector of the remote station. The Junkers Remote Tool is running on both the remote computer and the home station computer, transmits the CW signal over the internet and replays it to the remote station into the CW connector.

Hardware and Software requirements

Hardware:

At the remote location: Junkers key, USB2Serial (RS232) Adapter, a custom cable to connect the Junkers key to the RS232 interface, a Windows Laptop with internet access.

At the home station: USB2Serial (RS232) Adapter, a custom cable to connect the RS232 interface to the Key connector at the Rig, a Windows Laptop with internet access.

The diagrams for the cables are available here.

Software:

The home station shall be reachable via DNS, an IP address and port forwarding needs to be defined to the Windows computer running Junkers Remote (Jure), which can be downloaded here: https://github.com/SrMaker/Junkers-Remote

Details
Category: Amateur Radio
Radio Amateur License

Mid October I was granted the radio amateur license of class of license 1, power class B which corresponds to the CEPT recommendation T/R 61/01. My QTH is in JN88CI.

My call singn is OE3GRJ (Oscar Echo Three Golf Romeo Juliett).

I'm happy to receive messages and QSOs from other radio amateurs.
My first amateur radio devices

Since end of October I have been owning a 2m / 70cm handheld radio BAOFENG UV-5RE and the slightly more powerful BAOFENG BF-F8 HP.

My QTH ist not best located for 2m/70cm relais stations but I can reach the relais OE3XNS located at Buschberg. I could do my first QSO with my OM OE3HQH. 

 

Log Book OE3GRJ

NUM CALL NAME QTH FREQ MODE DXCC QSL via QSO Date Time On Time Off RST S RST R
001 2nd Operator Clubstation OE3XHU   20m SSB     09.10.2018        
002 OE3HQH Hermann Klosterneuburg 70cm FM Austria OE3XNS 19.10.2018 17:25 17:45 59 59
 003 CQ CQ CQ Gottfried Greifenstein 70cm FM Austria OE3XNS 20.10.2018 19:00 19:30