03-03-2019, 04:02 PM
A few weeks ago I was begrudgingly forced into upgrading from Windows 8.0 to Windows 10 on my laptop.
After a few of the expected teething issues it bedded down OK and I have got most things working.
I had finally cleared a few things off my workbench and this meant there was opportunity to have a play with FT-8 some more. I made a reasonable number of contacts and thought all was well.
I did notice that the waterfall had all sorts of new and weird traces, one of which coincided with the exact times the fans were running in the power supply:
[attachment=294]
Additionally the waterfall was messy and looked different to before the upgrade - but it was working so I didn't think too much about it.
This morning I was nerdling about on 30m while repairing some scuba diving kit on the bench. The waterfall was particularly messy.
At one point I dropped a pair of pliers and was vexed to see the received signal meter in WSJT-X jump into the red. I tapped the bench a couple of times and it did it again. The internal mic in the laptop was on, despite having the homebrewed interface to the radio plugged into the jack. I disabled the mic andnthe Rx meter dropped to zero.
I re-enabled the mic and unplugged the cable. To my astonishment to decodes kept coming. I turned up the AF gain on the radio, the Rx signal rose.
It was decoding via the radio speaker into the inbuilt mic in the laptop. It looks like this has been working like this since the Win10 upgrade.
The interface box (a couple of line isolation transformers) has, on the laptop side two cables with 3.5mm plugs as I was originally using a USB sound card. It failed so I now use a 2 x 3.5mm TRS to 3.5mm TRRS Y cable to plug into the laptop jack. It seems that if I have both cables from the interface box plugged into the Y cable when I plug it into the laptop the driver disables the external mic input and enables the internal mic.
If I plug the Y cable into the Laptop, then plug in the cables from the interface it is happy to use the external mic input.
The waterfall is so much cleaner now that all those extraneous noises aren't being picked up and the fan noise is gone too!!!
I can't see why people have trouble getting digi modes to work, mine worked even with an air gap in the input!
After a few of the expected teething issues it bedded down OK and I have got most things working.
I had finally cleared a few things off my workbench and this meant there was opportunity to have a play with FT-8 some more. I made a reasonable number of contacts and thought all was well.
I did notice that the waterfall had all sorts of new and weird traces, one of which coincided with the exact times the fans were running in the power supply:
[attachment=294]
Additionally the waterfall was messy and looked different to before the upgrade - but it was working so I didn't think too much about it.
This morning I was nerdling about on 30m while repairing some scuba diving kit on the bench. The waterfall was particularly messy.
At one point I dropped a pair of pliers and was vexed to see the received signal meter in WSJT-X jump into the red. I tapped the bench a couple of times and it did it again. The internal mic in the laptop was on, despite having the homebrewed interface to the radio plugged into the jack. I disabled the mic andnthe Rx meter dropped to zero.
I re-enabled the mic and unplugged the cable. To my astonishment to decodes kept coming. I turned up the AF gain on the radio, the Rx signal rose.
It was decoding via the radio speaker into the inbuilt mic in the laptop. It looks like this has been working like this since the Win10 upgrade.
The interface box (a couple of line isolation transformers) has, on the laptop side two cables with 3.5mm plugs as I was originally using a USB sound card. It failed so I now use a 2 x 3.5mm TRS to 3.5mm TRRS Y cable to plug into the laptop jack. It seems that if I have both cables from the interface box plugged into the Y cable when I plug it into the laptop the driver disables the external mic input and enables the internal mic.
If I plug the Y cable into the Laptop, then plug in the cables from the interface it is happy to use the external mic input.
The waterfall is so much cleaner now that all those extraneous noises aren't being picked up and the fan noise is gone too!!!
I can't see why people have trouble getting digi modes to work, mine worked even with an air gap in the input!