If you use PSKer with simply the speaker and microphone of your radio, should you lower the SSB mic gain down? Also how close do you hold the iPhone to the microphone? I'm not having much luck with this so far. Thanks
G, to listen, set your radio to USB mode, don't bother with any narrow digital or CW modes. And be sure to turn off any auto-notch filters, because those will target digital signals. Lately, 7.070 has been really active at night while 14.070 is lit up during the day, so those are two good frequencies to get started on. You should hear a warbling tone, many of them actually. It sounds a lot like the transporter from Star Trek. Start up PSKer and you should see lines forming on the waterfall display. Kind of like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3N8fXGnAm0 If you have an external speaker, put it near the phone, but if you don't that's OK too. Surprisingly, you may have to turn the radio's volume to clean things up. If you hear signals but aren't getting anything on the waterfall, you may have to fool with your phone's control panel to enable the mic for apps or such.
To send, hold the mic about 3" away from the phone's speaker. Hit send and key the mic together, and watch your power meter. I leave my radio on full power (100w) and move the mic closer or farther to keep the power down around 20%. About mic gain, I usually run on an FT-450D, so I set the 3-position gain to medium and set all the voice equalizations (in the menu and the switch on the back of the mic) to flat. Pretty much default settings work fine.
Just that easy. Of course, that's not a complete tutorial about how to operate PSKer, but ask away if you have any more questions.
BTW, the listening part works pretty well on any SSB shortwave receiver too.