As mentioned earlier, I have been setting up my work desk with some ham radio things, namely my Yaesu FTM-100DR for local repeater and WIRES-X access. I also wanted to redeploy my RemoteRig-equipped IC-7100 for HF access. That did not go quite as planned.

A bit of RemoteRig history as it pertains to my domicile. My wife indulges my numerous hobbies, but only to a point. A room packed full of radio equipment would be a step too far, so my HF rig and it’s attendant antennae are installed in my workshop and I invested in a set of RemoteRig RRC-1258MkIIs units paired with my Icom IC-706MkIIg. There are other ways to remotely operate a radio, but this solution uses SIP and VoIP technology to extend the control head separation cable over an IP network, whether locally or across the planet. It does a great job of it.

I originally purchased my set in 2015, along with the increasingly rare and expensive Icom OPC-581 separation cable (which I then, painfully, had to cut in order to use) but I was able to control my IC-706 in the workshop from anywhere on the property and with a little forethough, pretty much anywhere else either. In practice, I really only tested it from anywhere else, but I used it from the house frequently. Though I had not planned to do so, a situation kind of forced me to use it for Field Day 2015. Then I failed to submit the logs for my 57 QSOs. Sigh. I also used it for a Texas QSO party contest from our dining room. The thing just works.

I digress. When I got the itch up upgrade rigs around 2017, I kept in mind to find a compatible rig and landed on the Icom IC-7100. It was equally easy to reconfigure RemoteRig to the 7100.

Life and such ensued and some years passed with occasional use, but somewhere in there, the RemoteRig control unit was misplaced. I have searched quite extensively for it and while I am sure it will show up someday, I reached the conclusion that it was no longer practical to keep searching for it and elected to replace the missing unit.

In the years since my original purchase, RemoteRig had restructured somewhat and no longer does any direct sales. I think Ham Radio Outlet used to carry them, but they are no longer listed. I looked at all the vendors listed on RemoteRig’s webpages and found no US distributors. Furthermore, I found only one who sold single units, as opposed to a pair in a set, Limmerad in Sweden. The price looks scary at 3,600 kronor, but that is only about $365 US.

Only, he says.

So a week later, it’s in hand and set up. I updated firmware on both units, especially since I’m sure the last time the radio unit was updated was around 2017 or so. Everything seemed to come up working, but because I’m not really operating regularly, it would be quite a while before I would notice an issue. I had no transmit audio.

The troubleshooting saga deserves its own story. Over a period a a couple of months, I used Wireshark to snoop packets to verify that there was essentially no payload audio in the outgoing packets from the control.

For sanity check, I verified that audio packets coming from the radio definitely had data.

I used an oscilloscope to verify that the microphone was passing through the control head and into the jack on the RemoteRig device.

This signal was pretty low, 600ish mV peak to peak, so I also measured it directly at the microphone to ensure that it was not be adulterated by the control head, but it is the same 600ish mV for a similarly loud signal (of me emulating a tone generator; I can hold a frequency reasonably stable). I honestly expected some sort of amplification or buffering to happen in the control head, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Following the suggesting of a new friend from a RemoteRig forum, I was going to tap the option strap for the microphone inside the RemoteRig control device to verify that audio was making it *to* the device. In his experience, these strapping jumpers are unreliable. I removed the cover to gain access to the jumpers, then pulled up the documentation to see which pin I needed to connect to.

Hello!

I specifically remember putting in the jumpers that were not directly across from one another first then going back fro the ones that went straight across. I obviously skipped one and the one I skipped carries the microphone signal into the RemoteRig.

Doh!

I put the missing jumper on and they lived happily ever after.