Quark-elec Manual
7 of 10
2018
V1.0
3. Connecting
QK-A021 has the following electrical connections/indicators:
AIS antenna connector
. Standard SMA female 50 Ohm connector. An active VHF
antenna splitter is required if one VHF antenna is shared by QK-A021 and VHF voice radio.
(We recommend separate antennas ideally.)
USB connector
. A USB connector outputs the AIS messages directly to the
connected device. It can also be used for adjusting hopping parameters using the GUI
Configuration software.
4. Using QK-A021 with OpenCPN
OpenCPN is free software that can be used to view concise chart plotter and navigation information. It
is available for use on both PCs ,MAC and Linux systems. The following is a sample setting for the
OpenCPN plotter. Go to the options tab at the top of OpenCPN and click on the connections tab. Fill
in the data below as instructed. Set the COM port and the baud rate of your device. Then click add
connection. We set COM2 as the QK-A021 input and COM1 is used for a standard serial port GPS
input from an external device.
GPS input is in COM1
AIS input is in COM2
