Lost Modulation on AM - Intermittantly

James Del Principe

I operate on an AM round table almost every morning on 75 Meters with my Flex 6500. Intermittently, I lose modulation although the carrier is fully present. It can work fine for months and then fail without warning. Allowing the Flex to sit for a time will restore the normal operation. I own two identical microphones, both Yaesu MD-100 s.    I can swap mics and then use the mics on another rig. They are not the cause unless they both have the same fault. However, they have never failed on an old FT 2000. This has never happened on SSB to my knowledge. I searched for this issue but do not see anything written on it. The release level is 1.12.1.35. This happens with or without an amplifier.  There are no long transmissions and lots of rest time between transmissions. Any thoughts? Has anyone else experienced this?    Best 73 to All, Jim

WX7Y

Something simple to try, Turn the radio off and then unplug the Power for a minute or so, if that doesn't do it make sure your Profiles are exported and then do a HARD reset and reload your Profiles all except the DESKTOP one. 
This may correct your problem
Good Luck
Bret 
WX7Y

James Del Principe

Thank you for your ideas, Bret. I will try that the next time it fails. Problem has been so intermittent it is difficult to troubleshoot. I swap mics and then it works but when I next swap back, it also works.... I think it is internal and maybe SW so I will try what you suggested.   73, Jim

Tim - W4TME

Intermittent problems are very hard to diagnose since they are impossible to reproduce.  I see that you are using SmartSDR v1.  There have been several fixes in the SmartSDR v2 / v3 releases that addressed intermittent keying issues that were caused by race conditions.  If this begins to occur more frequently, you may want to consider upgrading your SmartSDR software to get the latest bug fixes.

James Del Principe

After several contacts it failed yet again. No indication of anything wrong, just no modulation on SSB this time. First time I noticed it fail on SSB.  I backed up my profiles and did a factory reset. After restoring the profiles. it still did not work. No RF output on SSB.
Upgrading to release 2 or 3 seems like an expensive bug fix. Are bug fixes not included in release 1?

James Del Principe

After several contacts it failed yet again. No indication of anything wrong, just no modulation on SSB this time. First time I noticed it fail on SSB.  I backed up my profiles and did a factory reset. After restoring the profiles. it still did not work. No RF output on SSB.
Upgrading to release 2 or 3 seems like an expensive bug fix. Are bug fixes not included in release 1?

James Whiteway

I would call.Flex first

Bill -VA3WTB

James, you would not be getting a bug fix, you would be getting a few hundred of them. Coming up to speed would be a very good investment.
Flex position would be I believe is that only critical performance updates will be supported in V1. I guess we can argue what is critical.

James Del Principe

Bill, I can appreciate your thoughts but this is the only issue I have....and we are assuming this is a software bug that is fixed in a higher release. That is not known for certain. I have no need for the features in release 2 or release 3 as I do not operate remotely and do not share my Flex with others. The purchase, for $ 200.00, would be to solve this one bug.....maybe.... possibly.    

Tim - W4TME

No, not all of them.  SmartSDR v1 is in the product life cycle where only critical defects are added to SmartSDR v1.