TX with CAT

No, this is not about a pet. We had cats in the past but they all died unfortunately. This is about my portable digimode station which I wrote about in several occasions but if I can remember well last time in november last year. I finally made a modem that worked, it uses the internal VOX of the FT-817 to switch to TX. The only problem I had was losing my CAT connection with the radio as soon as I transmit. It didn't matter to me at the time, but the problem is that I would like to have control over the radio when at a remote location. If you're not in the shack and have your radio equipment running for instance with WSPR it even is a need to be able to switch off the station in a emergency remotely. Then I remembered PE1BVQ Hans had problems with the CAT as well and has it running now through Ham Radio DeLuxe CAT control. So I was trying that using the old HRD V4 I still have on my laptop. But it didn't work at all. Then suddenly it occured to me that the CAT control could only be working with the use of the newer version 5. So installed that and finally got the CAT working after a few minutes. I discovered by coincidence that the FT-817 can control the TX switching through the CAT control. That means I don't need the internal VOX at all. Tested it and it works wel actually. Below te settings in the configuration file, Notice I use a old version of JTDX which still have the audio input slider which works very well. First station I received this evening was DP0GVN from Antarctica.

Well, for those that want to build my KISS digimode interface this could be a valuable tip. Because in this case you don't need to use the mike input like I did but you can use the appropriate pin on the mini DIN connector at the back. In that case you can use DIG mode again like with other interfaces and keep your microphone connected. I might reconfigure my interface as it is one lead and connector less taking less room and even more simple.

Why didn't I think of this before....
Hope this will help others....