MK3 FMT Module Kit

If you’re looking for a easy to build but powerful Morse tutor this is it! Designed for the FISTS CW Club this tutor offers a wide range of features that you will find hard to beat. The tutor modes are: Random Letters, Random Numbers and Mixed Modes which is the standard from the old type of tutors, but this tutor also offers much more; Random Prosigns, Random Callsigns, Random common words and abbreviations, Contest mode (More on that later) and even a practice oscillator and session timer. The tutor is very simple to use, no pages of menus to navigate your way around, just one push button that changes the mode and 3 knobs, one for character speed, one for the gap between characters and finally a volume control. The tutor can be configured in a number of different ways, in its most simple form there is no display module and the current mode is just announced by a higher pitch Morse character identifier, this way a small highly portable tutor can be made. If you wish, the next level would be to connect to the modules LED outputs and have a row of small LED’s that show the current mode. In its most common and default setup a twoline backlit LCD display is used to show the current mode and the last two groups of 5 characters that have been sent. Learning the code can be hard and you do need to stick to it, but don’t spend too long per session, it’s not beneficial. I suggest keeping to a 10 min session once a day, every day. To help you know when a session is up the tutor will illuminate a LED for 10 secs every 10 Minutes. This is a sign that you may need to take a break. Now a note about the contest mode, ok what is contest mode? Well the tutor will send a typical contest type ‘Over’. It will send a random callsign followed by a three digit serial number, finally a short random message ending such as ‘GD DX’, a 4 digit locator (Not necessarily the one for the callsign !) , RST Report, or ‘QRZ’ etc. That’s all well and good but to add to the realism as much as possible the pitch between overs and also the speed will change randomly if you select the ‘ACM’ (Advanced Contest Mode) on the tutor’s board (a two pin jumper enables it). You may want to start with the standard contest mode but you can change to ACM at anytime. ( I activate it all the time on mine) The tutor will generate code from about 11 to nearly 30 wpm, if this gets too tame for you then you can push the tutor up to about 60WPM, another jumper on the main PCB selects this ‘Hyper’ mode. In addition there is now a control on the PCB that allows the user to change the default tones pitch to their own liking. Select practice mode and plug a straight key in and you have a practice oscillator to play with too. Runs from a standard PP3 9V battery.