Stuttering CW

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

@Trucker I hope we get some love before V4.

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