Friends: I've only had the F5KA for a few weeks and I've been experimenting with my audio rack and tweaking EQ and other settings for best sound. Transmit audio has always been good, clean and full.
After being away on a trip for 2 days with all the gear off and disconnected from antennas etc., I fired up the F5KA to begin operations on 80M SSB. I usually start by choosing the dummy load on TX1 and listening to the F5KA on a separate receiver (TenTec Jupiter) connected to a short wire antenna to insure that everything sounds good before going on the big antenna for normal operations. This time out I noticed a definite fuzzy quality to the edges of the audio. There is definitely a problem. So the troubleshooting began. I verified that the audio coming out of the mixer and applied to the Balanced Line In on the back panel of the F5KA was clean, clear and undistorted. I even tried different mikes and heard the same fuzzy quality to the audio. Remember I'm connected to a dummy load. No matter what power level is chosen 1 watt to 100 watts the audio quality remained fuzzy. I played with the Mixer's Balanced Line Input slider with no improvement. I tweaked the MIC gain slider on the front panel of PSDR (latest version) with no improvement. (I usually run the Mixer's Balanced Line Input slider all the way up (max input level) and the PSDR front panel MIC slider at 0 (zero). This has always worked well. I set my input level to the Balanced Line input so the Mic Meter just peaks at 0 DB and no higher. Leveler is usually set at 3. Turned it off and tried different settings with no improvement in the audio. Next I tried a completely different (linear) power supply. No change. Tried changing Sample Rate, Buffer Size and Operating mode settings in both the Driver and the PSDR setup insuring that both were set identically. All sorts of combinations didn't change the fuzzy distorted quality of the transmit audio. Next I did a "Hard Reset" on the F5KA by pulling the power plug and leaving it out for a minute and then re-inserting. No improvement. The audio going in is clean. The radio behaves as if either the audio processing has failed. Output power peaks easily at 100+ watts but perhaps the biasing is off. I even tried running the tests in the Ctrl + Shift + P screen. No improvement. I've run out of ideas. I guess my 7 month old F5KA needs to return to Texas for some warranty work. (I'm the second owner and I'm going to transfer the warranty with Flex if possible tomorrow.) Have I overlooked anything that can be done without the radio going back home for repair? Any suggestions before I box it up?? Thanks & 73, Frank N. Haas KB4T _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
