Yes, Fldigi will key your rig to send CW.  The rig needs to be in the USB mode.  Fldigi will key an audio tone. It works.  I've done it.

23 foot homebrew "flagpole" vertical for 10 thru 40.   80 meter attic dipole fed with ladder line 15 ft. above ground.

"Is anybody offended by the practice of disguising an Amateur Radio antenna as an American flag?" - NU1O

It doesn't bother me.  I use a flagpole as an antenna in my geriatric ghetto - even though flagpoles are prohibited.  Florida's "flagpole law" supercedes my HOA'a restrictive covenants.
However, I personally find the all-too-common practice of automobile dealerships erecting giant American flags to be highly offensive.

Yes, first you'll need a usb to serial port adapter and then you'll need a cable connecting the serial port adapter  to the rig's key jack.  K1NU used to sell them but I think he may have stopped.  You can order one from N3FJP.  I forget who makes the ones that K3FJP sells. 

At 7.1 Mhz it looks like you'll have two main lobes broadside (one on each side of the wire)  and two very small lobes off the ends.  The main broadside lobes will exhibit about 8 and a half db gain over an isotropic source at vertical angles of 40 degrees.  The broadside lobes are fairly broad in the vertical plane with significant radiation from a vertical angle of about 20 degrees thru 75 degrees.  It doesn't look like it will have too much in the way of low angle radiation.

"W8JX-Mine is good for about 75 kc under 2 to 1 swr"

BTW my post was in response to the previous post about Hustler verticals - Had a "senior moment!" 

Anyway, from some of the things I've read about ground mounted BTV verticals, one should become somewhat suspicious when they tend to exhibit a a broad bandwidth.  I've installed a number of 4/5/6-BTV's using decent radial systems over the years and none of them exhibited more than about 20-30 kHz of 2:1 SWR bandwidth.  I'd start by checking the coax if you're seeing a 75 kHz bandwidth.  You also might want to check the bandwidth by measuring the SWR right at the base of the vertical. 

I think the Hustler BTV series is the best bang per buck in antennas.  If you're not too serious about 80 meters I would suggest installling about 50 radials - each 20 feet long.  As mentioned earlier, use ground staples.  Fertilize and water liberally after installation. Maybe even sprinkle some grass seed over the radial field.  There will be some mismatch with the 70 ohm hardline but the losses on good quality hardline shouldn't be a big problem.  The thing will play on 80 but it's pretty short for that band and the bandwidth will only be 20 or 30 khz. 

Only time will tell if it was a bright idea and whether such a business venture will make enough money to be worth while. There are numerous posts on this topic in other forums here on e-ham.net.  I don't personally find the idea of paying someone else to use their "super station" appealing but many others might feel differently.

I live in an HOA and am able to operate using stealth antennas on my "property" - such as it is.  I had never really considered remote operation but became interested in exploring its possibilities when my son, who is a ham living in mid-town Manhattan, complained about the electrical noise levels in the city and the difficulty he was having hearing signals from his well-located antenna on the 15th floor terrace of his apartment building.  I set up a modest remotely operated station here at home in my geriatric ghetto using my stealth antennas just to see how it might work.  It was an exercise in irony.  It worked too well!  My son was often on my HOA-based station from New York when I wished to operate.  The solution was to set up a remote station at my daughter's house about 70 miles south of my present location in Florida and get my home station back.

The remote station uses a TS-480HX, an LDG AT200ProII autotuner and a 90 foot inverted vee with loading coils near the ends for 80M.  It's up 35 feet and fed with ladderline thru a 4: balun. It operates on all bands 80 thru 6 meters. It costs me about 50 or 60 dollars a year for remote internet access via the Logmein service.   My son's happy and I am too now  that have my stealth antennas back!

I'm certainly not much of a technician and am pretty dense when it comes to computers.  The point is... if I can set up a remote station, anyone can.   Find a friend or relative who will permit you to put a remote station on their property and tell your HOA to take a hike.  Try to find someone fairly close by so that you don't have to drive a big distance to do work on the station.  It ain't rocket science.

Calculate the  approximate inductance of the coils based upon their diameter, length and number of terms.  Then use EZNEC to systematically vary the position of the coil and note the SWR curves for each position.  I think the free downloadable demo version of EZNEC should be able to provide a good approximation of the coil placement.

JT-65 is a good weak signal/high noise mode if you don't want to have much of a conversation.  PSK31 is a very poor weak signal/high noise mode.  Olivia, MFSK and MT63 are very good weak signal/high noise modes.

Quote from AG1LE; "Any suggestions how I could improve the FLDIGI decoder further?   What kind of metric should be used as the standard to compare against?"

I really have no idea how to go about improving the FLDIGI filter ! 

One suggestion regarding a possible standard... (somewhat tongue in cheek)... Get Marti Lane (OH2BH) to copy some known text under controlled sets of adverse conditions... fading, noise, static crashes and QRM near the same frequency.  Then use his performance as a standard for comparison..  He's one of the best and most experienced CW OP's in the world. 

I'm not sure what you mean by a Bayesian framework.  Do you mean using something like a matrix of confusion probabilites based upon how often an "A" is incorrectly decoded as an "N" or a "Q" etc.  Do you mean using a conditional probablility matrix of sequences of letters in standard English etc. I guess it all depends on the type of text you're trying to decode. 

I recently started remoting my TS-480HX here in Florida for my son (K4RUM) who is in a very noisy location in NYC.  The host setup is a fairly old XP machine connected to the TS-480.  I run Fldigi and ARCP (free Kenwood rig control software) on the host and access the host over the internet using free "Logmein" software/service.  It's a really cheap and easy way to get started if all you're interested in is running digital modes. 

I don 't mean to be critical but I think that getting CW decoders to decode poorly sent CW is probably a more important problem to tackle than getting them to decode well sent CW under noisy conditions.  I've used Fldigi's CW decoder on several occasions and it fails to do an adequate job on all but near-perfect code. 

In addition to finding the common Olivia "watering holes," be sure to activate RXID when you're listening for Olivia.  Most experienced Olivia ops transmit a "TXID" at the beginning of each transmission that signals the mode they're using.  If you have "RXID" activated then fldigi will automatically change your mode and frequency to coincide with that of the other station.  Once you've actually established contact with a station you should switch your RXID off so that still another station using TXID doesn't draw you off frequency or change your mode.  In fact, unless you're running PSK31 or RTTY, it's always a good idea to use TXID and RXID.  RTTY and PSK31 are readily recognizable by their sound patterns so there's nothing to be gained by using TXID/RXID.

It's always a good idea when calling CQ to make sure your TXID is turned on. 

You can vary the frequencies where you want your RXID to respond when you configure fldigi.

I've been in the Bahamas the past 3 weeks with two contesters/DXers - C6AKQ & C6AUM.   I've just been doing casual ragchewing for the most part on the digital modes while the other two guys have been going at it hot and heavy on CW and have worked many thousands of stations. 

In more than a few instances I've heard them complain about a number of stations that have worked them 5 or 6 times on the same band/mode.   My question is for what possible purpose?  All these insecure, inconsiderate jerks do is make the pileups more difficult for everyone and incur the ire of the DX station they insist on working.  Enough already!

C6A is certainly not very high on the most wanted list but if you don't have it you might like a chance at working it.  Your chances are reduced by the inconsiderate individuals whose apparent insecurity causes them to insist on multiple duplicate contacts.  If it were me I'd simply refuse to confirm any QSO where the other station appears in my log more than twice on any band/mode.   I think if other DX stations (particularly expeditions to rare locations) were to adopt such procedures things might improve.

Tim, N4UM/C6ARU