6300 Key Clicks

K1ESE

Stations are reporting my CW signal has key clicks.  Specifically on the trailing edge of the first element of a string such as the first element of a letter.

The reports are on 80m.  I did not try other bands.  The radio has been back to Flex once for 80 meter problems which may or may not be related.  Software is the most current version of SmartSDR.

73 de K1ESE
John

Bill -VA3WTB

I read a post some were that said settings like delay and others make a big difference. It must be in your settings as most others are loving cw on their Flexes

Steve N4LQ

That conversation was about the TX Delay in the "setting" window. It should be set for zero when using QSK. This is easy to confuse with the Delay slider in the TX Panel. Of course for QSK, both should be at zero.

K1ESE

Steve -

Both the TX Delay in the "setting" window and the Delay slider in the TX Panel are set at zero.

73 de K1ESE
John

Steve N4LQ

John. If you have time give me a call on 7066 khz I'll listen for a while.

K1ESE

Problem solved.  Working with Steve N4LQ made the difference.  First we identified that strong key clicks only occurred if the setting of CW TX delay in the TX panel was set at less than 8ms.  Bad at 0ms, fine at 10ms.

Steve suggested several things, but the winner was rebooting the 6300 to factory defaults.  While there appears to be a slight difference to the CW waveform between a delay of 0ms and 10ms, it is negligible.

 I had not noticed this before since I only run full QSK  (0ms delay) some of the time.

I suspect that the problem started when I upgraded SmartSDR to 1.3.  The instructions about re-booting the 6300 are not at all clear.  I think it should say remove DC power, then press and hold the ON button while turning DC power back on until it blinks pink.  But, I am still not sure of the procedure.

In any event, Steve came to the rescue and all is well.

73 de K1ESE
John

 

Ken N9VV

GOOD WORK Steve!
dit dit
73 de Ken N9VV

Al_NN4ZZ

Hi John,
I've been following this and some other similar posts.  There are several threads related to the TX delay setting, and bad keying or keying problems.  Here are links to 2 others that are also recent since V1.3

https://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/bad-keying-v1-3

https://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/setting-of-tx-delay-is-critical-to-good-cw-keying-i...

The setting that works (or does not work) appears to be inconsistent and doesn't seem to affect every one.   Maybe it is related to the model. Maybe it is associated with a particular radio.  Maybe it is related to not resetting the radio during the V1.3 installation.     

Per the manual 0 is correct for QSK and if you need a non-zero delay for your amplifier then QSK is not an option.   But you were getting clicks at 0 if I read your comment correctly. 

It seems that very high values ( > 50 or 100 ) can cause issues.  

It seems that values between 1 and 10 cause issues for some. 

Questions for FRS -- Are there values or ranges we should avoid?   Are there any known issues?

Regards, Al / NN4ZZ  
al (at) nn4zz (dot) com

 

Steve N4LQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcFgIN0j2Ec&list=UU8yv24rjknvixn1KIAcwzoQ

Al_NN4ZZ

Steve,
I think there is some confusion about the delay settings since there are 2 different delays.  

- The TX delay on the setting screen for use with some amplifiers
- The CW delay in the CW panel or on the CWX setting panel

And they both seem to cause different issues at certain values.  

- Clicks from certain values of the CW delay per your video
- Bad CW from certain values of the TX delay as described in one of the other posts.
https://community.flexradio.com/flexradio/topics/bad-keying-v1-3

Regards, Al / NN4ZZ  
al (at) nn4zz (dot) com

Paul Christensen, W9AC

John,

There's still a problem in that the keyed waveform used to be fine with CW Delay and Tx Delay set to zero for QSK operation -- at least on the 6700.   The trialing edge of the waveform is now being completely cut off under these conditions. 

See the other related message thread to see scope image captures I took this morning.  Thanks for raising awareness of this issue. 

Paul, W9AC

Steve N4LQ

This is correct. John's clicks were 10 times worse before the reset however he and the rest of us still suffer from the zero delay thumps. 

Ken - NM9P

I ran some tests this afternoon on my 6500 and found roughly the same thing.... with TX Delay at zero, my signal started to clean up as I moved the CW Delay greater than about 10-12 and didn't seem to improve much more by about 16-17

The effect seemed to be the same on the Pan (I know, not a truly accurate indicator) whether on power setting of 1 or 100.  So I have currently set CW delay to 20 for safety until a fix is released.  I haven't noticed much of a difference on QSK performance this way.  I usually send between 23 and 27 WPM with the internal keyer and/or CWX.

Steve N4LQ

Thanks for testing Ken. I guess it's the difference in operating style. I noticed a huge difference going from zero to 10. I want to hear the band while sending and I could until now. 

Ken - NM9P

Are you using separate receive antennas?  I hear it really is almost full duplex that way!  But I haven't tried it yet.  That is on my agenda, once I build a receiving loop for 160 Meters. (After my tower goes up and I hang an Inverted 'L' for 160, hopefully in time for the contest season.)

Steve N4LQ

I've used my Pixel Loop and yes the QSK is fast if you turn the delay down to zero but generally I hear better on the wire ant.