The CW operator
You can copy a signal your ears can barely find — if everything else gets out of the way. The CW desk is about subtraction: less noise, fewer neighbours, fewer controls, and one note in the middle of it all.
This layout is deliberately sparse. One panadapter zoomed in tight, the receive tools that matter for CW in a single column, and a keyer with paddles big enough to send on with two fingers. Static Reduction's SR1 method was built for exactly this: it lifts steady tones out of the noise and keeps the tone itself, at about 8 ms of delay.
One signal, everything else tidied away
The panadapter is zoomed to a few kilohertz so every CW trace stands apart. The receive chain reads top to bottom in the order the audio flows, and the keyer sits where your hand rests.
The receive chain, then the key
Static Reduction — SR1 Available
DX Pro's line enhancer for CW and carriers. It looks for the steady tone inside the hiss and reinforces it, rather than just turning the noise down, and it keeps the note sounding like a note. The speech methods (SR2, SR3) stay off on this workspace.
CW Peak Filter Available
A narrow audio peak at your chosen pitch. With the filter at 250 Hz and the peak centred, one signal sings and its neighbours fade back.
Notch Bank Available
Eight notches that follow the VFO. Put one on the carrier that lives on 40 metres every evening and it stays put as you tune past it.
Mode & Filter Available
CW and the filter widths you actually use, as big keys. Or drag the passband on the panadapter directly.
CW Keyer with touch paddles Available
Iambic A or B, or straight key, from 5 to 60 WPM. The on-screen DIT and DAH pads make a touch screen into a paddle — handy on a laptop or when the real paddle is on the other desk.
DX Cluster, filtered to CW Available
Spots are classed by mode. Filter to CW and only CW spots show — in the list and on the panadapter.
VFO Wheel and S-meter Available
A big tuning knob for slow, careful tuning across a weak signal, and a meter for an honest report.
Graphic EQ Available
Ten bands to roll off the low rumble and the top hiss so a long session is easy on the ears.
A weak one on 40 metres
21:15 UTCForty metres is busy and noisy. You zoom the panadapter to the bottom 30 kHz; the cluster, filtered to CW, drops three markers on it. One sits on a trace so faint it barely tints the waterfall.
21:16You tap it to tune. The S-meter shows S3 and the note is buried. SR1 goes on: the hiss settles and the note steps forward without turning hollow. A strong station 300 Hz away is still bothering you, so the filter comes in to 250 Hz and the CW Peak Filter centres on your pitch. Now it is copyable.
21:17A carrier starts up just below. One notch in the Notch Bank, and because notches follow the VFO, it stays notched while you nudge the VFO Wheel to centre the signal.
21:18He finishes his CQ. You call on the touch paddles at 24 WPM, iambic B, and he comes straight back. A short exchange, a "TU", and you are listening for the next one with the receive chain still set exactly as you left it.
Because Static Reduction runs at about 8 ms, there is no smeared delay between what you send and what you hear back — the keyer and the receiver still feel like one instrument.
Keys, knobs and screens
A touch screen
Not required, but it turns the on-screen DIT and DAH pads into a usable paddle and the VFO Wheel into a real knob under your finger.
MIDI knob
Map a knob to the CW Peak Filter or the tuning with Learn mode: touch the control, move the knob.
Works with Stream Deck
SR1 on and off, filter widths and band keys on buttons beside the paddle.
- Everything in this layout Available — in today's pre-1.0 development builds; keying on Hermes-class radios.
- CW skimmer spots from your own receivers In development
- CW transmit on FlexRadio In development — receive works now.
A quieter CW desk
Arrange the panadapter, filters and keyer in the live demo first. One licence, £99, perpetual, for one machine.