Stuttering CW

Dick Illman

I leave my Flex 6700 on 24x7 so that it is ready for remote operation. The cw keyer starts perfect but gradually stutters and makes errors. The official fix is to restart the radio before each operation. It is getting to the point of being embarrassed to say I am using a Flex radio in a CW QSO. This has been going on for years now and still no fix on the horizon. How many of you are experiencing the same problem?

Pete La

I don't leave mine on 24/7, but I leave it on for most of the day and experience CW dropout (I'll be sending and I hear the sidetone correctly, but notice no power going out for several letters or seconds) on occassion. My VOX still drops out on occassions also. I've contacted the help desk several times over the years and get the "we are aware of the issue" response. Several firmware updates over the years supposedly fixed these issues, but they didn't. I also get a lot of "change this and that setting and it will go away" responses from the community and help desk. Still happens.

k0oks

I sent steps to reliably reproduce this bug to support. I was told they were passed on to the relevant developers because Flex was able to reproduce with the instructions.

This was October 02, 2023 16:36.

Flex has everything needed to fix this. We will see when it happens.

k0oks

Here is the info:

Hi, please see this thread regarding CW dropouts. I have determined the settings that cause the issue. It is an interaction between the TX Delay (Radio Setup→ TX tab) and the cw Delay (delay setting in the cw panel with settings for Speed and Sidetone, etc.)

In my posts to this thread I provide clear, step by step instructions to reproduce the bug so that you can analyze it and develop a solution.

https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8028946/cw-intermittent-during-sending#latest

I have heard numerous cw ops ragging on the Flex for dropping dits and dashes. Two of my friends purchased and then immediately returned Flex 6600M radios due to these bugs. So this bug is impacting new sales, as well as all the current users of course. Please work to resolve this as soon as possible, now that you can easily reproduce the issue there.

I have pasted the instructions below in case you are unable to get the link to the thread to work.

Thank you.

You can easily **reproduce** the issue:

- Set your radio to use Iambic keying (even with a straight key connected you can still turn this on for the test), be setup to send a string of dits by holding down the key.

- Set your TX Delay to 30 (Radio Setup->TX tab). After setting this reopen the window and be sure the value "sticks" because if you don't change to another text field this value will not be saved.

- Set the cw Delay (hang time) to 29 in the CW panel of the UI.

- Set the Speed to 19 wpm

- Hold down the key and you will hear all the dits via sidetone, however only a few are sent. This can be seen on your power meter, or even in the waterfall display. There will be black where the dits are not actually being sent.

Bill WW5M

This has been there for as long as I can remember - the discussion has been brought up multiple times.

It's time we had a fix for this. None of my other SDR radios have this problem (K3, IC-7300) I have 2-6600's

and they both have this issue when I leave them on! Come on guys!

Roger G3LDI

Hardly worth me putting my comments here. My Flex has been faulty since new - six years ago! I am so fed up with complaining about it, receiving all the fudges, bodges, and " we are aware of this problem" messages that I have given up complaining. A friend locally has solved it completely, he bought a K4 to use on CW, a rather drastic solution that I cannot afford.

The ironic thing is that I use it on 80m to teach CW with, and that has attracted comments like "You should really take CW lessons" and similar. Perhaps we will get a Christmas present with Pure Signal, Noise Mitigation, CW fixes and a whole new transceiver - as they told us we would get every year. If only we could use PowerSDR, it would be fixed within a week then!

I don't hold out any hope of a fix ( you could revert to 2.10.1 which was fine ) but we have been told not to do that. There are loads of people just suffering this major problem, but I don't think any of the Flex guys use CW.

Val DM1TX

I can only add my pain here. Been struggling with this since the beginning of my FlexRadio ownership.

Using now a RemoteRig pair for my Remote station and also a SunSDR rig with countless CW possibilities.

But this was never intended!

I still own 2 (TWO!!) Flexradios sharing same issue. And yes, going back to a previous SSDR is not an option!

"Software is the Radio!" So I trust the very capable Flex developers will nail this down! Hope dies last!

Merry Xmas!

73

Trucker

One can always hope. I feel the same way about the Automatic Notch Filter, Noise reduction and hopefully, someday, an all Mode Squelch. So many things have gone untouched for far too long. To be honest, I no longer believe Flex Radio cares enough to fix any of the outstanding issues that have been a problem since SmartSDR and the 6000 Series radios were introduced. It is just not that important to them.

James

WD5GWY

By the way, if you want Adaptive Pre-Destortion, Icom now has it for the Icom 7610. At no extra cost to boot.( time to play catch up Flex Radio!)

Mike-VA3MW

Based on what some contestors told me last week, they don't want ADP (or DPD) it makes their signal too clean and they won't splatter enough to hold their run frequency.

Sadly, you can't make that up. Mike

Gord-VA7GP

That is truly a sad comment, Mike ☹️

But I see the perfect, clear path: Add "Adaptive Pre-Distortion" and let those contesters leave it disconnected. The rest of us - advocates for a cleaner spectrum - will add that one cable.

Voila - each group is happy.

Right now, neither group has choice, and one group is dis-satisfied.

ka9ees

https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/comment/20607793#Comment_20607793

I'd call that "intentional interference".

VE7ATJ_Don

I'm with you, Ed! That's NOT the right reason for excluding newer technology to improve our signals.

Trucker

Mike,

Unfortunately, you are right. It's something I have noticed in contests for years now. And that attitude isn't limited to Contesters. Tune in to some of the night time roundtables on 75 and 40 meters to see the same attitude in action.

James

WD5GWY

Lasse SM5GLC

For those suffering from power drop-outs when using CW, it seems the only solution is to go back to SSDR 2.4.10 ! It do suffer a bit from jittery CW, but no power-loss. For those running 24/7 it may be a problem though, as I notice the radio seems to hang, after beeing left on for an extended period, and needs a loooong push on the on/off button to recover (2.4.10). BTW the power drop-out started with SSDR 2.51!

Lets us all make a new years wish for this to be fixed :)

/Lasse SM5GLC

Dan Trainor

SSDR 2.4.10 

Ron Koenig

Mike,

I don't know what "Some Contester" told you, but by far the vast majority pride themselves on having a clean signal. Spreading disinformation about Contesters as a whole, in a group owned by a company that sells "Contest Grade" radios and, especially as en employee of that company does not make any logical sense. It's alarming to see a Flex Employee making disparaging comments about Contesters and inferring that, by nature they are nefarious and weaponize their signals.

As I explained in the thread you Dirty Deleted (And you will likely hide or delete my comment here) You can NOT use what you see on the flex screen, especially on 10m as an indictment of someones signal. All strong signals, even very clean look Bad on 10m.. it's the nature of the radio.

Ron, WV4P

K1UO Larry

to Mike VA3MW... you DO realize that the contesters were giving you a tongue in cheek answer...right?? I know because I contested for 40 years.

Mike-VA3MW

Actually Larry, not this one. I've seen him do it. And, he was darn serious.

My first contest was about 1991, so I started after you. It was CQWW with a TS-690 from Northern Ontario and we did darn well for the 2 of us. :)

I do miss that HyGain 40/20M beam we had.

David Decoons, wo2x

I will verify with Mike in this one case the contester wants to purposely run mic gain to exceed zero. He also mentioned it on a competitor’s radio. This leads to splatter (worse IMD) which the normal wattmeter picks up as higher average power. Louder is not always better.

most contesters do not fall into this category but I have seen some that their signal is downright terrible.

Kudos to the contesters that run their stations properly.

Dave wo2x

Geoff AB6BT

I'm not a serious contester but I occasionally dip my toe in for a few minutes.

I have noticed, that on any SSB contest weekend, there are inordinate numbers of overdriven signals. As Dave said there some that are "downright terrible".

Just tune around and I think you will hear the same.

There is no defense for the actions of these folks.

k0oks

So this email from Flex (Flex Insider for December) gives a glimmer of hope. Perhaps sending in exact steps to reproduce the problem paid off.

SmartSDR and SmartLink Notifications

SmartSDR v3.6.x is currently in alpha testing and is scheduled to go GA as soon as possible. This release includes a number of incremental improvements to CW performance and stability, as well as, a fix for both an intermittent CW issue and a VOX issue that was causing no RF out for a short period of time. There is also improved interaction with the PGXL during transmit, reducing intermittent interlock errors, high SWR readings, and RF power drops.

A changelog will be issued with the release that will highlight the significant improvements provided by this release.

SmartSDR v3.7 will then follow later in January in conjunction with the shipment of the new Maestro supporting the introduction of that new and improved product offering.

Trucker

And still no mention of improvement to basic features. Same old stuff.

Pete La

IMO Flex should give us version 4 (if they ever develop it) for free to make up for all the time it took them to fix the old problems and all the trouble their incompetence has caused us over the years (front panel fiasco, delay after delay of products, Smartlink failures, DAX issues, etc.). They kind of let the cat out of the bag in this latest Flex Insider about limited resources being available for the amateur radio side of the house. Nothing is getting fixed or improved because everyone is working on the Air Force project. Just my opinion.

WX7Y

I don't think putting a new version number on it would fix any of the long term issues we have had, just hope they get the problems that version 3 and later version 2 has caused fixed before they open another can of worms with Version 4.

Lets stay positive and never loose hope that things will get fixed.

I for one am thankful we hear ANY news of updates coming so they will continue to let us know what is going on and be a little bit more Transparent.

ka9ees

If you were lucky enough to go to Hamvention and the Flex dinner. You got some peaks at what should become V4. I'm excited about that. I've heard V3.6 isn't far off. I too would like to see some improvement in the ANF.

Trucker

If they didn't make you sign a NDA, how about sharing some of those peaks you are excited about? It might give some of us hope that Flex Radio actually intends to improve SmartSDR someday. I just hope that v4 contains some really useful improvements. Plus, I hope that basic features get some love before v4 appears. Or at least is back ported to previous versions to fix long standing issues.

James

WD5GWY

ka9ees

What NDA is that?

ka9ees

@Trucker I hope we get some love before V4.

ka9ees

The biggest takeaway for me was a realtime S-meter. What they showed was pretty nice. Reminded me of Icom's version.

Trucker

Non Disclosure Agreement. Meaning you can see the presentation of the new version as long as you agree to not reveal any of the details of the presentation/new version. Usually it is a form that you would have to sign before being admitted to the presentation. If you were not asked to not reveal what you saw,then you should be free to share that information. So, that is why I asked you about that. If you didn't sign anything, how about sharing what you saw with those of us who could not attend the event?

James

WD5GWY

Pete La

I certainly will not be paying $200+ for an S-Meter addition to SSDR. There will have to be a lot more features added. I still think it should be free.

Pete K1OYQ