Radio Menus¶
The QMX's own menu system, on the Tab5's screen — the same 80×24 terminal you would get from a laptop running PuTTY, without the laptop.
This exists because a QMX+ with no control panel has no other way in. If you built a headless radio to save weight and space, this is how you reach Configuration, Band config, System config and everything else.
It is equally useful on a radio that does have a panel: two lines of LCD and a rotary encoder is a slow way to move around a deep menu, and the Tab5 shows the whole thing at once.
1. First: give the radio a second serial port¶
The terminal runs on the QMX's second USB serial port, and that port is off by default. You only have to do this once — the setting survives a power cycle.
On the radio: System config → GPS & Ser. ports → USB serial ports → 2
!!! note "Why a second port, and not the one already in use" The QMX manual is explicit that leaving a terminal session without choosing Exit terminal leaves the radio refusing CAT commands. On the port the panadapter is already using, that would take the whole display down with it.
On its own port it cannot. CAT frequency, mode and the S-meter were measured
running normally for the entire length of a terminal session — the panadapter
keeps working while you are in the menus.
If the port has not been enabled, the Tab5 tells you so rather than failing quietly — and it puts the whole menu path on screen, in both the Tab5 panel and the browser, laid out to be followed while you are looking at the radio. The person who needs that instruction is the one who never read this page, so it belongs where the failure happens rather than in a message that disappears. (Michael KZ4LY)
2. Opening it¶
Settings drawer → Radio → Radio menus
The keys are along the top, all the same size: ▲ ▼ ◀ ▶, Enter, Back, BS, the keyboard toggle, and Close.
With the snap-on keyboard attached you can skip all of that and drive the radio's menus directly: arrows to move, Enter to select, digits to type into a numeric field, Backspace to delete, and Esc to leave the screen. Typing a value is far quicker than the on-screen keys.
Or open it without touching the screen at all: Ctrl+R.
Radio ▸ Radio menus
The on-screen buttons work, and so does your actual keyboard — arrow keys, Enter, Esc, and typing. For entering a value into a menu field, the keyboard is much the faster route.
The radio's menus cascade: opening a submenu draws a new box over the top of the one you came from, so you can see the path you took. The highlighted row is where you are.
3. Leaving it¶
Use Close.
The Tab5 walks the radio back out through its own Exit terminal item — it reads the screen to find it, so it still works however deep in the menus you were. That matters: simply dropping the connection is what leaves a QMX ignoring CAT.
Two things happen automatically so you cannot get stuck:
- If you close the browser tab, the session is closed for you.
- If nothing happens for two minutes, the Tab5 hands the radio back by itself. You will see "session timed out — closed". Open it again to carry on.
You come back to the frequency and mode you left. A trip through the radio's own menus can move the dial on its own — go into Hardware Tests → Diagnostics to read the supply voltage, come out, and the radio is on 160 m whatever band you started on (Randy N4OPI). On closing, the Tab5 puts the frequency and mode back if they moved, along with re-enabling I/Q mode and re-reading the noise floor.
!!! note "If you changed band on purpose" That gets put back too — the Tab5 cannot tell a band you chose in Band Configuration from one the menus changed behind your back. Set the band again from the Tab5 afterwards.
!!! tip "Where you land" A session opens on the first menu item, not on Exit terminal — even though Exit terminal is where the previous session left the highlight. That is deliberate: otherwise your first Enter would drop you straight back out.
4. Typing and editing a value¶
A block cursor shows where you are typing — in a field like one of the Messages, that is the difference between editing and guessing. (Randy N4OPI)
BS deletes leftward. Land on a value, backspace away the digits you don't want, and type the new ones — the cursor sits on the rightmost digit to begin with. In the browser both your Backspace and Delete keys do this.
!!! note "There is an on-screen keyboard" Tap the keyboard button in the top row and a full QWERTY appears along the bottom. It types straight into whatever field the radio has open — there is no separate text box to fill in first. Tap the keyboard button on the keyboard itself (bottom left) to put it away again.
Useful on a Tab5 without the snap-on keyboard, which otherwise has no way to
type a value at all. *(Randy N4OPI, Michael KZ4LY)*
!!! tip "Band config tables: E and D change a setting, and the arrows do not move you" In the band config table the Enable/Disable entries accept either ◀ ▶ or the letters E and D — type them straight in from the on-screen keyboard. Because those fields use the arrows to change the value, the arrows will not move you to the next column while you are sitting on one: step onto a numeric column first, then move across.
That is the radio's own behaviour, not a Tab5 limitation, and it explains
something that otherwise reads as the arrows being broken in tables.
*(Stan Dye KC7XE.)*
!!! tip "Longer values are backspace-and-retype, not arrow-adjust" Short values — one or two digits — change with ◀ ▶. Anything longer, and anything inside a table, does not: on those the arrows do nothing at all, and in a table they move between columns, which is the radio's own intended behaviour.
For those, use **BS** and type the value instead. `Max. PA voltage`, the band
config columns, `CAT Config → Timeout`, `System config → TCXO frequency` and the
Virtual U3S values all edit this way. *(Randy N4OPI worked this out from PuTTY
and told us — it is how the radio has always behaved, not a Tab5 limitation.)*
5. What it does not do¶
- It does not transmit. Nothing here keys the radio.
- It does not know what you changed. If you alter something the panadapter displays — a filter, a band setting — the Tab5 finds out the same way it always does, from its next CAT poll.
- It is the radio's interface, not ours. What the menus contain, and what each item does, is documented in the QRP Labs QMX operating manual.