Draft-- commments, corrections to george@w4avo.org

Note- I certainly don't take credit for the software and hardware described below. They are the work of others. I just configured the pieces and made them work with the Winmor installation on my boat

WINMOR + The $9 Icom CAT Dongle

Rick and the team that brought us WINMOR built in a nice feature that allows the WINMOR TNC to program the radio frequency and mode for the selected RMS station. Selecting a station in the frequency list tunes the radio to the proper frequency and sets the USB mode. The radios supported included are Icom, Kenwood, Yeasu, and others. My radios are Icoms so this note is about that brand. You are on your own for the others but the approach should be similar.

Icom CAT is called CI-V and is an bidirectional single-wire serial asynchronus mode using TTL levels . The Icom interface is called a CT17 and requires a serial port and costs $150. A USB dongle is available that does the job. I got mine on Ebay from kawamall_cool (!) for less than $9 incl shipping.

Here is a pix of the dongle and driver miniCD. Note "mono" 3.5mm plug

The dongle is based on the Prolific USB-to-Serial Bridge chip. I have Windows XPSP3 and it worked fine. Use http://www.kawagebo.net/eb/manual/PL2303_Prolific_GPS_1013_20090319.zip driver for Windows 7. It took some doing to get it to work with W7.

There is a lot of good in RMS Express > Help...Radio Control . Here are my notes and step-by-step:

• Use the supplied CD to install the driver
• After successful installation check device manager (Start...Run...Open:devmgmt.msc) to see something like this:
  
  
• Note the com port number assigned to the Prolific USB-to-Serial Bridge. If this conflicts with other com ports you use click on it and go to Port Settings...Advanced...Com Port Number and change it.
• Go to your radio's menu and get its CI-V address and baud rate. My 706 was set for 58H and 9600 baud.
• Run RMS Express, Open Session WL2K,...Setup,...Radio Setup.... Fill in data for your radio. For the Serial port put in the number you got from the Device Mgr. PTT will be EXTERNAL if you are using a SLUSB. I'm not sure if RTS and DTR are needed here but leaving them checked doesn't seem to hurt anything. The panel will look like below for a IC706. Hit Update and you're done.
  
• Plug the 3.5mm plug into the CI-V port of the radio. Select or 2xclick a station and frequency on the HF Channel Selector screen and the radio will tune to it and set USB.

  [Note- Don't forget the $39 to ARSF to register the software]
  

  Other uses of this CI-V dongle

  AIRMAIL- (A program to implement WINLINK over HF)- Here are notes to use the dongle to control an Icom radio with this.

  SATPC32- (A program to do "one-true-rule" uplink and downlink doppler tuning for amateur radio satellite comms) Here are notes on setting up an IC-910 for CAT control with this program.

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  de W4AVO 9-30-2012