Adagio - From Adagio (U.S.A.) #9 12/05-12/06 2018

#9: 12/05-12/06 2018: Wednesday/Thursday

The mystery ...

OK, for the tech giants and masters of electrons .. Here's a question :) . (I'm just going to pretend this is social media)

Right before we left Las Palmas, I was pleased to have the iCOM guy come aboard to do a test of our Single Sideband radio system. I had always been curious about our setup and sure enough, the review discovered a few things in 'need'. Ultimately, the problem came down to the auto-tuner not . well .. tuning. Not at all. So, while it;s not technically possible to send and receive messages via SSB unless the tuner is working, we've been successfully doing so for four years. How?? well, nobody knows .. and this whole Ham Radio/HF/SSB thing is referred to as a "black art" for a reason.

In the end, I decided to replace the tuner in hopes of vastly improved performance. So, we found a tuner at BridgeCom in Las Palmas and the installer had it in and tuning in only an hour. Everything appeared to work just fine so I was happily looking forward to our long-range communications once we got going on the "Net".

What I discovered, however, is that the new Tuner (an AT-141 iCOM Auto Tuner) works quite well tuning all channels for voice but it does not play well with the Pactor Modem to try to get Sailmail or weather Faxes. As long as I don't try to tune the antenna for the frequency, things work but when I press that "Tune" button, it is like some mystical thing takes over the radio system and the computer. The computer disconnects the Pactor Modem from the USB port .. then finds it again, in this never-ending loop of rediscovery (complete with annoying "beep-boop"/"boop-beep" connection/disconnection sounds. The interface to SailMail stops responding and I basically have to do a hard shutdown to get it cleared out.

The problem is predictable and reproducible so I can't wait to hear from a technician about why this might be happening. All the 'usual' checks have been made, so it's a mystery disguised as a radio right now. As I said, the voice part works fine and we are indeed able to retrieve weather, as long as nobody pushes the dreaded "Tune" button :)

Go figure ...