Loss of transmit and receive

Gordon, ve7on

This morning during an FT8 session the receiver in my 6600M suddenly showed high noise level and no transmit. Only a few very strong signals were visible on the screen. I tried rebooting the radio but that made no difference. I turned on my other radio and confirmed that the band was normal and my antenna was ok. I did a reset on the radio and everything went back to normal

Has anyone else come across this problem?

Gordon, ve7on

Neil D Friedman N3DF

Forgive my inadequate knowledge, what’s the difference between a reboot and a reset.

Patrick

I like to consider a reboot as a full power down power on. And a reset as just a reset and restart at software level.....

Yes, I have experienced that situation also.... only way to fix it is to completely power restart the complete system, radio and computer and bring it all back on line. I find it sometimes happens after a long on period of the radio. While not using the radio. If I follow the practice of shutting down only the SmartSDR application on the PC after which I find the problem seems not to occur. 🤓

Gordon, ve7on

Further to my problem,

This morning when I powered on the radio from a cold start the no receive problem was there again. I restarted the radio and the problem was still there. I tried transmitting (with the tune button) a few times and the problem went away and has not returned after an hour or so of FT8.

I am thinking there may be a problem in the T/R system. I do not know if it is a relay or diode system.

Gordon, ve7on

Patrick

Time for factory reset and removal of DC from radio...... major corruption.... hopefully you have a saved profile to restore too. If this persists, then open a ticket with Flex. I had, like many people a bad memory card that had to be replaced. Though it did not fix the crash problems, but probably contributed to the memory card failure.

Al_NN4ZZ

Gordon wrote:

This morning when I powered on the radio from a cold start the no receive problem was there again. I restarted the radio and the problem was still there. I tried transmitting (with the tune button) a few times and the problem went away and has not returned after an hour or so of FT8. I am thinking there may be a problem in the T/R system. 

I've also seen this occasionally on my 6700 and it only started fairly recently. And like you I've found that clicking TUNE will return the signal levels back to normal. My first thought was a dirty relay contact. It hasn't been a big issue and it is sporadic so I've just been watching it to see if it gets worse or corrects itself.

I didn't keep track but it may have started after I upgraded from V2.4.9 to V2.4.10. And I'm not saying it is software related or a corruption issue but maybe? If it is software I'd expect more people to report the issue. If it is a corruption issue then it will be interesting to see if anyone resets their rig and it goes away.

Regards, Al / NN4ZZ

al (at) nn4zz (dot) com

6700 Win10 SSDR V2.4.10

Gordon, ve7on

I had the same problem again this morning. A cold restart did not help. Trying to transmit also did not help and the transmitter only produced 0.4 watts in tune mode that is set for 15 watts. I tried turning off and on the "A" slice and then tried the "B" slice that worked and brought the radio back to normal. The "A" slice then began to work properly again and was perfect for the remainder of my 1 plus hour FT8 session. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings. I hope my radio does not have to go to Texas for Christmas.

Gordon, ve7on

Patrick

Sounds like a memory card problem, time to open ticket and get a new card sent out.

k3pw

I had a similar problem that disappeared after a few days. In my case I found that the signals were highly attenuated, meaning that if I increased RF Gain I could see a few signals on the panadapter. I also found that signal levels were OK when the mode was set to CW, but not when set to other modes. Also try enabling and disabling transmit using the TX button in the slice flag. That had an effect on whether receive signals would show up on the panadapter or not.

Good luck troubleshooting! Hopefully, my problem will not return.

Stan, K3PW

Gordon, ve7on

I have 2 6600M's so I swapped them around to see what happened. The same problem happened with the other radio so I started looking for something else. I turns out that I found 2 badly tarnished antenna connectors. Cleaning them up with fine sand paper solved my problem. Oddly enough my amp now tunes up in a different place.

It has been a few days now and the problem has not reoccured, so I am hopping this is the end of this.

Thanks

Gordon, ve7on

WX7Y

Sand paper is not the best to clean connecters because it removes the silver platting if they are Silver plated connectors which MOST of us should be using. A better solution would be silver polish or de-Oxidizing solution then add some silicone grease made for this purpose which will keep the water out and there will be no Oxidizion.

If they are just the cheepy Nickel plated connectors then once you clean them with a scotch brite pad or other method then add some silicone grease made for this purpose which will keep the water out and there will be no Oxidizion.

In the commercial world most of the Connectors that are used for feed lines come with Silicone Grease for this purpose.