High rise help needed

[Mike Cotton - K4RUM]

I operate a TS-480HX.  The Radio RRC and rig are in Jupiter, FL and the Control RRC and rig control head are in New York.

The setup works just about perfectly when I use the Control RRC and the rig control head at my single family house in Bridgehampton, NY.  Things don't work so great, though, when I move the Control RRC and the control head to our new (to us) NYC apartment in a high rise building. 

Our NYC apartment has two ISPs available; Spectrum (formerly Time Warner) and Fios.  We opted for Fios.  Both my computer and the Control RRC are hard wired to a bridge, which is connected by coax to the router.

On occasion I can turn on the rig using the control head (most of the time the control head does not light up and there is no audio).  When I am successful in turning on the rig, I can usually operate FT-8 without a problem.  If, however, I try to operate CW (my preferred mode), within a minute or so there will be a squawk and the control head will go dark.  Sometimes I lose audio, and other times I don't.  Sometimes the control head light will come back on, and sometimes it doesn't.  When this happens, sometimes a restart of the Control RRC will get things back on track, and sometimes not.  Similarly, sometimes a restart of the Radio RRC followed by a restart of the Control RRC will get things back as they should be.

My computer can always locate both the Control RRC and the Radio RRC, and varying the power makes no difference on any of the above behavior.

I presume the issue is with internet access at the NYC apartment since all works fine at my house. 

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

73,

Mike Cotton
K4RUM

[dj0qn]

Hi MIke,

Sounds like a router or even switch problem, or perhaps some settings that are not correct. I doubt that it is with
the ISP, but you never know.

Basically it is impossible to answer this based upon your post. You need to make a lot of individual tests and use the
process of elimination to find the problem.

First I would take the RRC and control panel to someone else's house and try it from there. If it works as it should, then
you have narrowed the problem to your QTH.

Then you need to see if you can borrow a different router, or some more methods to locate the problem. You will have to
make a list and see if you can find the culprit.

73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX

[Mike Cotton - K4RUM]

Hi Mitch  --

Thanks for your thoughts.  I know I don't have a hardware issue because everything works fine at my Bridgehampton (single family) house.  The problem is an intermittent one at my apartment.  Three questions:

1.  Do you have any idea why CW might cause the control head to go crazy, when a digital mode such as FT-8 is less likely to do so (for what it's worth, the quality of the CW generated when it is working sounds fine when I monitor it using a web SDR)?

2.  Do you have any idea why on occasion the control head is difficult or impossible to turn on, even though there is a connection between the computer and the Control RRC?

3.  Which settings would you suggest I check first, taking into account that the setup works fine at my other QTH?

[dj0qn]

Hi Mike,

Right, I just reread your posting and realize that you already proved that it worked elsewhere, thereby
confirming that the problem is at the apartment.

I am not sure why CW would work less, hard to say. There are three UDP streams sent over three different
ports. The port that sends the CW commands is a different port that sends an audio stream, so my guess is
that that particular port is at least partially blocked. Maybe someone else has a better theory.

What does the status screen show on both sides when you make a connection? There may be a clue there as
to which port is being blocked. I would then take a look first at the router to make sure that the port is being
forwarded correctly (as UDP). The only "fix" would be to change this port to something different and try it again.
If that doesn't work, I would try a different router.

73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX

[Mike Cotton - K4RUM]

I'm posting this with some embarrassment, in the hope that it may help someone with a similar issue in the future.

It turns out that the issue with the "squawking" and the shutdown of the control head was due to a change in the menu settings of the TS-480.  My rig sidetone had turned on, and was set to level 9 (a number of my rig's settings changed for reasons that I have not determined yet).  Once I turned the rig's sidetone off all was fine.

Thanks again to Mitch for his thoughts.