Another CW keying dropout oddity

[NA6O]

I'm trying to solve my remote CW keying dropouts. Yes, I know the standard procedures and answers. My config info is below. But here is an unusual behavior. Keying on the Control side is via the I/O connector using a hand key, bug, etc.  When continuously key-down, I hear in the RRC-generated sidetone an exactly 1 pulse per second dropout, with approximately a 99.5% duty cycle. This happens whether the remote connection is established or not.

When keying the remote K3, actual on-air keying also may have these same dropouts, but with a probability of about 20%. Sending dits at 30 WPM results in either missing or extended dits at a rate of about 10 errors per minute. I sound like an idiot on the air. Meanwhile, received audio quality is excellent and audible dropouts are very rare.

So this seems to have something to do with the Control side alone, I suspect. Has anyone ever heard this? If this is a real error, I think my keying dropouts may NOT be due to a network packet loss problem.

Experimenting with LF delay and Key delay, they make NO difference in the keying error rate or dropouts, all they way up to their maximum allowed values. Again, this sounds more like a problem with packet production than transmission.

Network performance:
Control side, Comcast cable: 65 Mbps down, 5 up,  BufferBloat rating A+
Remote, WISP: 66 down, 74 up, BufferBloat rating C
PingPlotter RTT 14 ms, jitter 4 ms.
Running a 200 Hz UDP packet error loss tester on the uplink, I currently see 4.5 dropped packets per minute with the network at normal load. We will be investigating this in the near future because I think it's excessive. But hey, it's UDP...

Details on RRC boxes. Program mode = K3 Twin.
CONTROL:
Serial number 12395
Product   1258
PID   4
Version   7
HW   8
Software   2.91
Bootloader   1.13
Compiler   4.6.2
Build   Jun 16 2016 07:13:13
Last WD Reset 9
RTP mode = Continuous
LF delay = 60
Key delay = 40

REMOTE:
Serial number 4359
Product   1258
PID   4
Version   5
HW   6
Software   2.91
Bootloader   1.9
Compiler   4.6.2
Build   Jun 16 2016 07:13:13
Last WD Reset   4027053737   <-- What is this huge number?
RTP mode = Continuous

-Gary NA6O

[G0KPE]

Hi Gary,

Did you ever get a response or a fix regarding your post 4 years ago? I have exactly the same scenario. 1 second glitches to side-tone with Input-0 keyed-down. Listening off-air to my remote transmissions, instead of a constant carrier, there are occasional drop-outs that are in-sync with the local side-tone glitches. Most of the on-air dropout glitches are around 'dit' length, but some are longer periods, possible causing the random delayed dahs that I have recorded off-air.

I am on my home network and I do not believe this has anything to do with UDP packet loss, because of that in-sync sidetone/remote TX glitching. I have lost confidence in using the RemoteRig CW keying feature as my on-air CW sounds poorly sent with dropped dits and dahs and sometimes randomly added dahs.

I think that there must be a 1-second software loop in the RRC Control unit that is unintentionally affecting the CW key messaging to the remote RRC radio unit, but only those occasional times, not every single second. Perhaps once every 10-15 seconds.

With luck we might get a response from the software developer.

73
Carl
G0KPE   (using v2.95 firmware)