RCA PTT Flex 8600

F4BPO

Hi all,

My station is Flex 8600, TGXL, PGXL, AG 8x2.

While using the LAN PTT I get a lot of issues in CW, namely when switching quickly from tx and rx and tx again, I have complete power drop out. The power is 0. In this case I need to stop transmitting for 1 second and start again.

I have put a RCA between TX1 of the radio to PTT In port A on PGXL, then another RCA cable from PTT out port A of amplifier to the PTT in of the TGXL port A.

It works without any issue but I wanted to be able to do SO2R and this is where it gets tricky.

How do I do for this setup ?

I added a RCA cable from TX2 to PTT in Port B on the PGXL, then RCA from PTT out of Port B on PGXL to PTT in Port B on TGXL.

TGXL seems to work as expected but when I have two slices opened on the Flex one on ANT1/ANT1 and another one on ANT2/ANT2 the PGXL does not engage.

While I did setup TX1 and TX2 for all bands from 80 to 6m in SmartSDR, it seems like when two TX are used on same band the PGXL does not get the PTT. If I remove TX2 and leave only TX1 checked for a band then on my slice A ANT1/ANT1 on this band the PGXL will engage. If I uncheck the TX1 and check the TX2 and on my slice B ANT2/ANT2 I TX, I see PGXL engaging on Port A…

Not sure all of this is understandable but if one of you understands how should I actually wire all this, I just want to do SO2R with 2 different antennas on two different bands but with RCA PTT.

Thanks a lot for any help

Mike-VA3MW

@F4BPO

You should not see any dropout on a LAN PTT connection. It can either be a LAN communications issue or the TXD and CW Delay settings. Can you let me know what they are? The LAN switch is very reliable normally, can LAN layer communications issues can impact it.

From a LAN connection, are you using a GigaBit switch and would you consider trying to use a 100mb switch as a test? Not all switches are created equal and it might be worth the test.

For manual RCA, TX1 and TX2 can only be assigned by bands, not by Antenna ports. Could this be your issue?

Mike

F4BPO

Hi Mike,

Ok you replied with your last sentence, indeed it seems to be the issue.

Regarding the LAN, I am on 10Gb LAN mainly but from my 10Gb network on the first floor it goes downstairs to the station with a 10Gb link to a Mikrotik router (8x1Gb Ethernet + 2 SFP+ 10Gb, one to 1st floor and one to computer). The Flex 8600, TGXL, PGXL are all connected to a 1Gb ethernet on the Mikrotik router. I could try a 100Mbits router which I do not have currently so I would need to find one.

For sure with LAN PTT currently it is totally unusable in CW for me.

The CW delay is 150ms but at 0 it is same. And if I put 400ms of course when I transmit in one shot no issue, the problem is with quick tx to rx then rx to tx the second tx session has a complete drop out.

It happens all the time.

TX Delay is 40ms.

Mike-VA3MW

If you understand networking, I would run "ping -t <radio ip addreess>" 100% of the time and watch it while you are operating. Do this on the same computer as SmartSDR. This might show if you have some sort latency in the network.

In fact, ping all the devices and see if something unusual shows up.

If still having an issue, open a support ticket.