Contesting with Flex6600 and PGXL experience

Sergey KN7K

Contesting with Flex6600 and PGXL experience

 I am writing my story right away after 7QP Contest that.

The reason for this post is not to vent, but find out is there anything in my settings (PC, Network or Radio) make this experience challenging and less enjoyable that is supposed to be.

I am looking at SSDR radio as a package – PC, SW, HW and reliable operation. When operation is interrupted during contest it very frustrating when your goal is finishing the race with the best score possible.

Problem Statement:

1.       Multiple radio lockups (4 events) during 12h work in a 7QP Contest. I did not count other few events that recovered by sending anything on CW keyer, like “dash”

2.       One of these events ended up with no CAT or DAX works (all COM ports were gone besides 2) and could not connect to AG

3.       A lot of time lost in recovery, included CAT and DAX settings recovery, power cycle AG, power cycle PC, restart N1MM

Background:

1.       Flex6600 updated to a new SW ver 3.1.11 on April 29

2.       PGXL updated to a new SW ver 3.4.10 on April 29

3.       PC details

Windows 10 with up to date SW

PC – Intel i7-7700@4.2GHz

RAM DDR3 – 64GB

Video card – NVDIA GeForce GTX1080

HDD – Intel SDD1TB

4.       Network Nighthawk 8500

5.       Network switch TP-Link TL-SG108

6.       Antenna – 2el Steppir (+30/40m loop), Inverted L for 80/160m, 6el 6m monoband.

Findings and thoughts:

1.       Currently I cannot say for sure is it a bag’s in the SW, settings in N1MM, some timing issue or else.

2.       During Contest I tried to hit “Esc” button, disable/enable/disable lit “Mox” button on Maestro and SSDR without any changes.

3.       Last few events were recovered by touch CW keyer and sending one dot or dash, radio would come back to RX

4.       I exclude RF in the shack model, if this would be RF, I would see it too often. Also, as soon as I recover everything I work for hours on the same Antenna, same frequency and same power.

Here is demonstration of one of the lockups during this contest, sorry for camera orientation

Doug

Sergey KN7K

Mark_WS7M

Sergey KN7K

Neal Pollack, N6YFM

Sergey KN7K

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Sergey

Sometimes it is hard for me to reply to these since I often have to wear 2 hats.  The work one and the Ham one.  This is Mike the Ham responding.

I can't say I've ever seen the same thing happen to me, but I have had a loss of communications and that will result in some strange events.

It took me a while to figure it out, but in order to do it, I had to have a bunch of sessions running Ping continuously to show that in my case, my network hiccuped.  I would ping the radio from the PC, or the Amp from the PC, but at the same time I would have the PC ping the switch and another one on the router.  I had window running ping EVERWHERE.  

This is what it looks like pinging the radio from the house computer over the VPN.  30ms round trip for 300km's. 

C:UsersMike>ping -t 192.168.110.76

Pinging 192.168.110.76 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.110.76: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=62

Eventually, I had a loss of communication while I was watching, and what I found out is that the Switch I was using actually crashed and rebooted.  The key point was when a RPI that was not part of anything radio was pinging the network router, and it lost communications.  As well, everything else failed to communicate with its partner.  I hope that makes sense.

That gave me the clue I needed to debug it.   Eventually, I replaced all cables with commercially made CAT5E (I had a few of my own) and I went to another switch.   That part was hard as the switch has to 'work' and be RF quiet.  

That fixed the remote base.

Next, at home where I operate from 6M up, the same thing.  It turned out that the TP-Link TL-SG-1016G doesn't like 6M.  Boom.. it goes offline running 6M FT8 or MSK144.  Too bad, as I like that switch.  

So, I highly recommend you look closely at what Neal wrote.  I should try the same thing at my home QTH and see if I can measure any currents.

You might want to try the same ping exercise while transmitting and see if you start to get some packet loss.

Mike va3mw

Sergey KN7K

Neal Pollack, N6YFM

Sergey KN7K

Lasse Moell

Mike-VA3MW

Thanks for that.  What I did was just keep it running, during a contest and see if you can tell when a hang happen does anything else change in the network and stop working.  

Sergey KN7K

Yes, N1MM is a suspect, also all my lockups were happening after I sent a report, radio would stay in TX mode and would not switch to RX.
When I did interrupts with "Esc" button I do not recall radio lock up. I just demonstrated that some delay exist and it is intermittent.
Sergey, KN7K

Andy - KU7T

Maybe unrelated, but I fixed my USB unreliabilities by plugging my USB hub into a 2.0 instead of a 3.0 jack. It's not like I have a hard drive on it, just ham peripherals. All solid now. 73, Andy KU7T

Sergey KN7K

Andy,
My radio, PGXL and AG use Ethernet connection.
Steppir connected to radio USB port, so I am not sure I have the similar issue as yours.
Thanks
Sergey, KN7K

Sergey KN7K

K1ESE

Sergey KN7K

Sergey KN7K

Boyan LZ2BE

DL4RCE

Boyan LZ2BE

Andy - KU7T

LZ2BE

Andy - KU7T

Is there any text in the Entry window status bar? Do you have networking setup and are in the M/S category? It could be the soft lock if other station is on same band. 

Andy
KU7T

Sergey KN7K

Sergey KN7K

Will do, 
Thanks

Sergey

Dan-N7HQ

Sergey KN7K

Thank you Dan,
Help ticket submitted.

Sergey, KN7K

Ignacy

Any news from the ticket or other developments?

Ignacy NO9E