[CQ-Contest] Key Clicks

[Jim Brown]

On 6/4/2020 3:30 PM, Jim McCook wrote:
> I purposefully avoided naming the radios that I noticed had the clicks. 
> I think people should discuss that off line.

I strongly disagree, Jim. Until those making the buying decisions are 
aware of what'd dirty and what's clean, we're going to continue to have 
this problem.

A major contester in the Northwest was tearing me up with clicks this 
weekend, and I emailed him about it. He responded that he had an IC7800, 
that keying risetime was set for the fastest, 4 msec, and asked me what 
he should be using. I told him the longest (slowest) setting.

My comments about clicks and splatter are based on listening and looking 
at keying bandwidth and SSB modulation bandwidth on a calibrated 
waterfall. The material on my website is based on ARRL Lab data (which 
they sent me electronically for many of the radios) and my own 
measurements.

Rob Sherwood has done the ham community a great service with his 
extensive measurements of receiver performance, and the result has been 
much better receivers. It's long past time to have cleaned up 
transmitters! Almost any time I tune the phone bands, I see a disturbing 
fraction of signals with splatter taking up as much spectrum each side 
of their signal as the signal itself. I've called or emailed or 
contacted on the air lots of guys with these dirty signals, and with few 
exceptions, the splatter is coming out of the rig, not the amp. And each 
time the culprit has been a low to moderate cost fairly recent 
production (within 5 years, and current) Yaesu rig.

Simply put, running a rig, especially in a contest, that has clicks 
and/or splatter is being a VERY bad neighbor, and the fact that it has a 
great receiver is no excuse!

73, Jim K9YC