CQ WPX SSB performance

km9r.mike · March 31

I am placing this in the 8000 series group since this happened with my new 8600 and never with my 6700 and I loved my 6700.

I am limited to 100w and a low profile antenna due to HOA police. Because of this SSB is usually not a mode for me because cw, rtty and ft8/4 are far more effective with my power level and antenna. My antenna limitation is the biggest hinderance and even entering any contest is borderline sadistic for me, however I have found using a Flex to be a strong plus.

I will however participate in two SSB contests regularly. NAQP SSB and NA Sprint SSB. The Sprint is the more critical of the two to have a strong signal because of the rules associated with that contest. I will participate in those two SSB contests because they are both domestic contests and not DX orientated. This weekend , however, I did participate in CQ WPX SSB contest which has both a domestic and DX orientation.

Ok after all that background here is the bottom line. I received over a half dozen non solicited positive reports about my audio quality during this contest. One was even from an EU station who's remark was "beautiful audio" which I considered remarkable @ 100w and a **** antenna from basically the West Coast. The stateside comments were more numerous and all positive. I never got a negative comment about my 6700 audio, however, I never got a positive one either. Finally, there were many South American stations right at the noise level that I probably should have never been able to work, however, I believe it was the clarity and high quality of audio that enabled those stations to hear me. A few of those stations required me to repeat the exchange but the overwhelming majority of stations were able to receive my exchange with just the first try.

I am using the same Heil proset that I used with my 6700. Instead of being directly connected to the rig, I now connect the Heil proset through the PC and use PC audio since my 8600 is not headset user friendly (at least for me) like the 6700 was. SSDR EQ is approximately unchanged between the two rigs ( attenuated lows and boosted highs), however I did narrow transmit bandwidth a bit more. For the 6700 I would use 300hz to 3000 hz transmit bandwidth , but for the 8600 I was using 400 hz to 2900 hz. I could probably tweak that a bit more but there is only so much time on Friday of the contest that someone has to use before the contest starts.

Bottom line. Kudos to Flex for their 8000 series. SSB has never been a go to mode for me and in no way am I experienced in ensuring better than average audio quality. I do have experience however in hearing great contest audio and using Ken's FDX method I simply tried to achieve what I thought was good contest grade audio. I was happy to hear others thought the same and I never got that feedback while using the 6700. Again a radio that I absolutely loved.

Ken Wells · March 31

Bottom line: If it sounds good to YOU, and that is the way you want to sound — then save the profile and make a backup of it in case it gets messed up!

My Personal opinion: Low Cut of 400 seems a bit high. For DX or Contesting, I like to use Low-Cut of 200 or 300.

But opinions are like teeth — Most people have at least ONE.

If YOUR voice and YOUR mic sound best to you with the settings you have — lock it down and use it!

km9r.mike · April 2

I agree Ken that 400hz for a bottom end of TX bandwidth seems high and I was hesitant to run with it that way, however, it sounded like what I was looking for via FDX and all of the on the air feedback was positive. Not one negative comment. I think in this case the bass in my voice can be too aggressive at times.

When I have more time to tweek, I was thinking of revisiting 300 or 350 hz for the bottom end but reducing the top end by the same amount to keep overall bandwith as small as possible to keep my 100w as effective / efficient as possible.

One other thing that I did forget to mention was since the headset is going through the PC, users should check to ensure you have proper mic levels set in the PC before even getting to the rig. I was unaware that Microsoft also has the ability for different boost settings as well for the mic connected to the PC so ensure the boost setting in the PC is at a reasonable value. By doing both of those, it seemed like the mic level on SSDR remained very consistent after being properly set. Finally, I wish the SSDR downward expander was not greyed out while using PC audio , but there seems to be an incompatibility somewhere when PC audio is used.

Mike-VA3MW · April 2

Here is my starting point for contest audio. BTW, Ken is the expert. I hack at it.

If I happen to jump on a new radio, I first trust my Mic element to do the job. I know if I have a Heil HC-4 element, I run it flat as it already has the required EQ with the required roll-offs. Bob Heil did a great job on it.

Generally, I roll the bottom off about 300hz and the top around 3000hz +/-. Assuming the Mic is flat I'll drop below down a bit, but I have a bassy voice and I don't need any help in the bottom end. I then notch around 1000hz to remove any low end harmonics that show up around there. (I can't remember who told me to do that, but it seems to help).

Next, I boost around 2000hz a few db. Don't go crazy.

Lastly, I listen to myself on a 2nd receiver using the Full Duplex (FDX) feature of the radio. FlexRadio is the only radio that can do this and it is a very powerful feature.

The other really cool thing with the radio, that no one else does, is that you can actually see your Mic Level without going int TX. Make sure you don't overdrive the Mic Level past -5dBm or so. Always watch the Mic Level no matter what radio you use (ALC on other SuperHet radios).

I hope that helps a bit.

73, Mike

https://www.youtube.com/live/p79V9Nn8l0U?si=v1G3y9jE-x1S-xXn

km9r.mike · April 3

Mike,

I should have just mentioned initially that I used the identical headset on both the 6700 and 8600 and omitted the brand and model altogether because I believe it is the 8600 and SSDR doing all the heavy lifting. When I try to tweak the current setting I will pay strong attention to the 1000 hz setting.

With the 6700, I used to run at basically the same settings that you described tx bw 300 - 3000 attenuated lows and boosted highs that were approaching borderline crazy levels perhaps. I never got a negative report but at the same time no one ever said anything positive as well. I was very happy to get positive feedback on my audio from the 8600 from ops that work SSB contests far more than I do.

In addition , a neat feature that I learned about while using SSDR with N1MM is the following. I use VOX in SSDR while contesting and there are simply times when I do not want VOX engaged so I would momentarily disable VOX and then reengage it via the SSDR Vox button. However, that can be at times not as convenient as the following. While utilizing the voice keyer feature of N1MM, say a recorded cq message in loop mode while running , I could also disable the TX flag in the slice window between cq messages to disable Vox as well and when N1MM commanded another cq message to be played the TX flag in the slice window would automatically reengage w/o any action on my part which would of course enable Vox again automatically. I just thought it was neat that N1MM would command the tx flag to reengage w/o any action on my part while in loop mode.

CQ WPX SSB performance

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