Been Busy!

 Yes its been a while since My last post! Work and family has kept Me busy. I've been out of town for work on and off for the last month . My family has also kept Me busy but that has been fun outings-- swim meets, corn maze,and other doings!
  I have had a little time to jump on the bands and contacted TX3T on 12m but not nearly enough considering how great the bands have been. I've also been trying to get ready for the upcoming CQ WW SSB contest next weekend. Had some reports of poor audio with My Heil microphone so I decided to investigate. I first verified the audio on a local net-- Yes, the audio sounded like a slight RF content to it so next I needed to find out why!
  I've set the parametric equalizer on this radio to take advantage of its excellant audio and I made sure the parameters were still saved to memory by looking back at My post of March 17 2011. Well thats not the problem, so using a dummy load i first verified the audio sounded wrong-- which it did. Sounds almost like a slight hiss/sizzle/sharpness to it . I turned the power down to 5w and it still sounded "off" but not nearly as bad! First clue! This "mike" had been OK last spring- what was different?? Well I had straightened up My shack-- tying up chords including the long Heil chord at the adapter. Hard to explain but the Heil adapter has a loop to it where the 310 plug and "mike" plug come together. I tied it up into a loop and now decided to un-tie it and try talking. - -lots better! Both 5w and 100w. Somehow some TX audio must be feeding back thru. Later I added a clamp on ferrite and will keep it "messy" and not neaten it up with ties!!
  Hope to have many QSO's next weekend during the contest!!
 73---Tim