Greetings All: I've owned a Flex 5000a for 3.5 months. After 2.5 months of no keying issues at all, I've been experiencing intermittent NO POWER OUTPUT when attempting to transmit in LSB or USB modes. The radio keys but no power output appears on any meter, internal or external. The problem occurs randomly and intermittently without any discernable pattern or trigger.
Workarounds that seem to quickly resolve the condition include changing the VFO frequency or moving the DRIVE slider in PowerSDR. Starting and Stopping the radio in PowerSDR does NOT clear the trouble. The Setup: Clone PC, 2 GB RAM, DuoCore Pentium Processor running at 1.8 GHz, Windows XP Home Edition SP3 PowerSDR, Firewire driver and firmware are all the current versions listed on the Flex home page Firewire cable is the one supplied by Flex. 3 additional ferrite snap-ons on each end of the Firewire cable. Firewire card is a "no-name" using the AGERE chipset in a PCI slot that is NOT sharing its IRQ. Have also tried a SIIG Firewire card with the TI chipset in the same slot and same problem. HotFIX applied so Firewire card runs at S400 according to the driver's Firewire card scan. Computer and Flex Radio are bonded to the same ground system. Sampling Rate: 192K, Buffers 2048 -- Normal & Safe Mode Level 1 produce the same problem. Verified same settings in both driver and PowerSDR Audio forms. PowerSDR Phone RX & TX Buffers: 4096 This setup was "keying issue" free for 3 months. Only recently have I begun experiencing the "no power output" problem. The only coincidental event is running the PA BIAS Calibration procedure. That is, the no power output problem only began after I ran the PA BIAS cal process. I ran the PA BIAS cal process to see if a problem I was having with occasional fuzzy transmit audio was in any way affected by the PA BIAS being increased or decreased. Dudley guided me thru the cal process. Changing the PA BIAS between the 2 recommended settings had no impact on my transmit audio distortion problem. I have since taken other steps to work around the transmit audio problem and don't want to dwell on that in this thread. PA BIAS is currently set at the recommended 1 amp Driver/4 amp Final settings. When things are working, output power is consistent and at desired level. Nothing is evident to indicate any sort of intermittent failure in the PA...that is, no scratchy sounds or crackling in the audio or intermittent power output level to indicate a cracked solder joint or other physical problem with the PA. Troubleshooting Steps Taken thus far: Swapping out the Firewire cards: No improvement Increased number of Ferrites on Firewire cable: No improvement Total deletion of all Flex related software and total fresh re-install of freshly downloaded latest versions of PowerSDR, Firewire Driver and Firmware. No install issues at all. Switched to alternative Firewire connection points on both the Flex Radio and the computer's Firewire card: No improvement Database Reset -- done twice so far with no change in the problem. My gut tells me the problem is a Firewire communication problem. Since a change in the DRIVE setting or a shift in frequency and return to frequency in use seems to get things going again, software or Firewire communication seems the most likely problem. I suppose it's possible that RF is getting into the Firewire connection as I do run legal limit much of the time. In the past I've been able to run PowerSDR, FireFox and Ham Radio Deluxe simultaneously with the existing antenna system and amp without any problems at all. No lockups, no slowdowns and no power output problems. CPU usage varies between 18% and 40% depending on what's going on. At the end of each operating session and concurrent computer usage, the Temporary Internet Files, caches and other trash are deleted from the computer system using CCleaner. Been doing this daily since the Flex first went into service with no apparent negative impact on Flex performance. No changes have been made to the antenna system, ground system or amp. The only thing different is the PA BIAS calibration. I've done everything I can think of EXCEPT operate barefoot for an extended period or shut off every system tray app to see if running just 100W output or fewer "resident" programs produces the intermittent power out problem. I'm open to additional suggestions. All other programs run without a hitch on the computer. The Firewire cable has not been stressed. The amp is in the same position as are all the related cables and accessories as they were before the problem began. Feedline is windowed ladder line and the antenna is a full wave 80 meter horizontal loop. No changes to any of that have been made. I can check my grounding to see if anything has gone open or intermittent. I can run barefoot for a while and see if the problem occurs. Beyond that, I wonder what other troubleshooting steps I can take. I've dug through the Flex Knowledge Center and Reflector Archives. The only answers I've found were to reset the database and re-install the software. Neither has helped. I find it interesting that there were virtually no replies to either of the two notes I saw in the reflector archives. Evidently, this is NOT a common problem. Any other suggestions? Thanks! 73, Frank N. Haas KB4T Florida _______________________________________________ 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/
