audio pulsating off & on and radio cuts off after 30 seconds

[KA3DCO]

In general I have had a successful remote operation since March of 2016. I live in a condo and my shack is several blocks away. My radio is IC-706 MK II and remote gear is RRC 1258 MkII. I am experiencing two issues, radio powering off after short time and the audio randomly pulsating off and on rapidly. Right now every time I power up radio it shuts off after 30 seconds or less. The first time this happened was May 4th, but until now has not been problem. I usually just power up again and all is OK. This has been happening more frequently in past few weeks. The other issue is the rapid pulsating of audio. This is also random and sometimes I may have a week with no problem, and then it comes back for days at a time. When this occurs it is next to impossible to operate. The first time this happened was on April 10. As time goes on it has gotten worse. I would assume that my configurations and settings are correct or system would not function at all. It does work and it works well most of the time . I have been impressed with setup and have gotten much pleasure being able to operate from home. Numerous times when these problems occurred I have re-entered port information in RRC's and routers and it disappeared for short time. I operated radio successfully using separation cable directly between radio control head and radio body for 45 minutes consecutively just yesterday. I have upgraded my internet server from Verizon DSL to cable which is three times faster. Both RRC units are connected to router via Ethernet cable, nothing is wireless. I have also considered the possibility of stray RF and have unplugged everything at both locations near the equipment. I am totally lost as to what to try next and would really appreciate any suggestions or help I can get.

Many thanks, KA3DCO

[sm2o]

This kind of problem is 99% related to the internet connections. You can verify it by testing the RRCs on the same LAN.

73 de mike

[KA3DCO]

Mike- many thanks for the reply-this morning I connected both RRC's and radio head and body-the radio turned on immediately and has stayed on for four hours-what would you suggest as a next step?

KA3DCO
Kenny

[sm2o]

Try figure out in which end you have the connection problem by taking the controlside equipment to a friend. If it's OK then the problem is at your normal control QTH. if you still get disconnections etc, the probelm is probably at your radio QTH.

73 de mike

[KA3DCO]

Hi again & an update on my progress with problem. On Sat. 20 I moved the Radio RRC & radio body to a friends home, and I think, properly did the necessary port forwarding. We were not able to power up radio but we were able to connect to each RRC unit successfully. On Sun. Aug. 21 I moved Control RRC to same location. We were able to connect with each RRC but unable to power up radio via LAN. I then moved all equipment back to normal setup and connected everything as I have had it for the past four months. I am still unable to power up radio. On evening of Aug. 22 at 5:00 p.m. I was able to connect with both RRC's from my home but at 9:00 p.m. I could connect only to Control RRC, which is located at my home. The internet provider at control and radio locations is a local company and I am going to contact their IT person to see if he can help. I have put a lot of time, patience, money, and efforts into this project but I am approaching the end of my resources.

KA3DCO, Kenny

[sm2o]

If everything worked OK when you took home the equipment and run them on your LAN you have verifyed that the Remoterig boxes, cables, straps etc are OK . if you can browse a Radio-RRC through the router but not connect with the controlpanel the most common problem is that either the portforwarding is not set to forward UDP packets for port 13000-13002 or SIP ALG is activated in the router ( SIP ALG should be disabled) you can email me the exported settings(html) files from both units so I can have a look.

73 de mike

[KA3DCO]

Hi again Mike - I have separated the two RRC units and for part of one day everything worked perfectly - however on Sat. through today (Aug. 27 through 29) I am still unable to connect with RRC Radio via web browser and for most of this time the radio comes on and cuts off in 30 seconds or less and the audio is skipping so badly that it is not really usable - one thing of interest is that I have an error message on the RRC Control unit and I am sending you a photo of the screen that I took - if in fact "internet connection" is the problem, how can I present this to my internet provider for a possible solution? -  both RRC locations are on the same internet provider, who is a local company - in fact, the owner of the company lives in the same condo building that I live in - as always, many thanks for your help and your patience - Kenny, KA3DCO

[KA3DCO]

I am very happy to report that finally my IC 706 and RRC-1258 are working together flawlessly. On November 8 the IT guy from my local cable company spent some time with me and made some configuration changes in RRC's. My local cable company services both the Control and Radio sites. The most significant change he made was enabling the "Ping Watchdog" feature of the RRC-Radio unit. Now, the RRC Radio pings every five minutes and after three "no responses" automatically re-starts the RRC unit. He also changed the web server port from 80 to 8081. Also, I am able to access the RRC Radio unit from my home QTH at any time via the web. Since these changes have been made I have had perfect operating conditions and am enjoying this immensely. I have also gained much respect for the RRC 1258 equipment.

Kenny, KA3DCO