Self Monitoring

Within the first few QSOs during last month's CQ WW SSB, while running, a caller informed me that my audio was highly distorted. It was just my microphone audio since the pre-recorded messages were okay. I was told that it sounded like RFI into the mic. This was despite having the headset core wrapped around a ferrite suppressor. 

I thanked him profusely and within a minute, while continuing to operate, I came up with a possible workaround. The headset mic and phone connectors were routed via an SO2R box. I pulled the cables and plugged the headset connectors directly into the rig's front panel jacks. Problem solved. 

I have yet to track down how RF was getting into the SO2R box, which I need to get to before trying SO2R in a phone contest. The only station change was installation of a new PGXL amplifier under the operating desk. Perhaps a change to cable routing is called for or more ferrites on the cables.

We often rely on critical reports from other stations to assess the quality of our transmissions since it is quite difficult in most cases to self monitor our transmissions. What comes out of the rig's monitor does not really do that, only being useful for detecting obvious distortion fed into the RF amplifier stages of the transmitter. It won't detect key clicks, excessively wide sidebands, harmonics and a host of other ills.

We are often uncomfortable giving critical reports or receiving them. It's easier to pass on by and avoid the social discomfort of telling them. Many will provide on air feedback without providing their call, just in case of a bad reaction. While in cases like FT8 it is difficult to say anything at all on air, requiring an email or other method to communicate with the owner of the poor transmissions.

I have suggested to a few friends that a second receiver is a good way to self monitor. All you need to do is disconnect the antenna from that receiver, or transceiver, to prevent receiver overload when listening to a strong local signal. An alternative favoured by others is to connect to an online web SDR to listen to themselves from a distant receiver. Inviting a friend to monitor your transmissions also works well though during setup or station changes, or in lieu of self monitoring.

For an unexpected difficulty like the one I experienced in CQ WW SSB we really do benefit from those on air reports. We rely on others to inform us. Like most people, hams like to be helpful. However if they have one poor encounter they are unlikely to ever do so again. We ought to welcome the poor signal report, thank them and do what we can in the moment to fix it. Perhaps that requires the inconvenience of stopping the operation, turning off the amp or another easy adjustment. The root cause can be tracked down later so that a permanent solution can be implemented.

What if you don't know and nobody tells you? Worse, what if you don't want to know? Unfortunately there are hams in the latter category. They react with belligerence to reports of poor transmission quality, or they may be superficially responsive yet take no follow up action. If the station is on the other side of the planet it may not be a continuing inconvenience to you. For closer stations that are frequently active it can be a recurring headache.

You can't know in advance how they'll react. You might even be surprised by a negative reaction from a ham you thought you knew well. I have had both positive and negative encounters, though thankfully far more of the positive kind. We tend to remember the negative ones and use that experience to justify to ourselves why we don't reach out more often. That is, we hear the poor signal yet say nothing.

Consider the example shown above. This has been going on for at least 2 years by a ham that has a poorly configured system for transmitting FT8. In this case it appears to be within the attached PC where the soundcard DAC (digital to analogue converter) is being over-driven. I wonder if anyone has told him? He is not local but close enough (500 km) that the QRM generated is occasionally a problem for my limited digital operation.

For those local to the offender there is more incentive to act. When I've encountered one I've asked around to find someone that knows the ham in question. Hearing from a friend or fellow club member can be more successful than coming from a stranger. More than one problematic signal has been cleaned up this way. They were unaware of their poor signal quality.

Another common fault is key clicks. The station under the marker is very active and consistently has bad key clicks. He's in Europe and has a big signal. During contests it can be a problem. He's far from being the only one. One of the reasons I eventually retired my FTdx5000 was its key clicks problem that was not curable without intense internal surgery. Perhaps he has one of those, or he has a better rig that has a CW rise time setting that is far too short. I can only speculate.

In this case I suspect that he knows. A few contest sponsors are now notifying participants of key clicks, SSB splatter and poor transmissions that impact others -- distorted audio without splatter isn't in this category. We'll have to wait and see if that changes how contesters react. It's a sad fact that in some cases the wide signals are a deliberate attempt to keep their run frequency clear, by discouraging others from operating close to their frequency.

Poor signal quality is not a new topic, here or elsewhere. A few examples of where I discuss poor signal quality are here, here and here, and there are more examples in earlier articles. My reason for mentioning it now is to ruminate on how many hams bother to use external receivers or remote SDR, or solicit reports from other hams, to check their signal quality. If they know, how many care and will take corrective action? On the other side, how many will reach out and tell another ham, unknown to them personally, of their poor signal quality?

I appreciated that signal quality report in CQ WW SSB and I made sure he knew that I appreciated the feedback and would get to work on it immediately. When another ham reaches out it is incumbent upon us to react positively. Don't put up barriers by ignoring or attacking the one trying to help you with your transmissions. Regrettably some do. 

Ultimately they are mostly hurting themselves -- reputation and on-air success -- yet also create headaches for others. By letting them know, respectfully, you are doing them and the broader community a favour. Start by periodically monitoring your own signal so that you don't become one of "them".