Update:

So it turns out, the actual problem was that my headset was paired to both my iPhone and my computer. After doing all of the below and having it working perfectly, to troubleshoot further I reconnected the headset to my phone and the computer audio started skipping again.

I disconnected the headset from the phone (but didn’t Forget it) and it kept skipping. So then I turned of Bluetooth on the phone and the skipping stopped.

So the moral of the story? On the phone under Bluetooth, Forget the headset from the phone and only have it connect to the computer alone… no more skipping.

At some point after upgrading to Catalina I noticed my bluetooth headset kept dropping audio, several times a minute. I haven’t narrowed down the exact cause of the issue, but I was able to resolve it, so that is good enough for me!

Here are some steps that I took, and some potential causes, let me know if any of it works for you:

Reset the Bluetooth Module

There is a Bluetooth icon typically located near the clock at the upper right of the Mac desktop. Users typically use this to view their connected devices, check battery levels on them, and connect/disconnect devices. Nothing new there.

And a bit more advanced users know that if you hold down option and then click on the Bluetooth icon, you’ll see some additional details and options up there: The Bluetooth version, address, and if you click on the individual connected devices you can see their signal strength and more details about them. Nice, but nothing helpful for this issue.

Here is a trick I don’t think I was aware of, if you hold Shift-Option and then click on the Bluetooth icon, you get even more options, including a Debug menu item.

What you’ll want to do is click on the Debug option then choose Reset the Bluetooth module. After that you’ll want to restart.

That alone didn’t fix it for me, so I went on to…

Delete the com.apple.Bluetooth.plist File

This article gave me the basic instructions for doing this, here are my shorter version of those instructions:

• From Finder click Shift-Command G which is the same as going to the Go menu and selecting Go to Folder
• In that box enter /Library/Preferences (note that is different than the individual Users’s preferences which are located at ~/Library/Preferences)
• Look through that list of files and find com.apple.Bluetooth.plist. You can delete the file, or just because I’m a cautious one, I dragged it to my desktop.

After doing that you’ll want to reboot again. On that reboot, I took the opportunity to do one additional step…

Reset the PRAM

PRAM or Parameter Random Accessory Memory stores some of the settings for your computer, so you’ll lose a few preferences such as if changing volume should play a sound, etc. Typically it is nothing major and I have rarely, if ever, had problems with a PRAM reset.

Go ahead and click to restart your computer, but before the grey screen appears press and hold the Command, Option, P, and R keys all at the same time.

Keep holding them down until you hear the startup chime at least 2-3 times. Then release them and let the computer start normally.

Re-connect your Bluetooth device and see if the problem is resolved!

One other option…

I’ll confess I did one other thing while the computer was restarting that may have had an impact on things, so I’ll mention it here. My headset was also paired to my phone, so I went ahead and had my phone forget the headset and turned off Bluetooth completely on it temporarily.

But either way, my audio hasn’t dropped out even once during the entire time it took me to write this post, so I’m going to consider the problem solved!

Let me know if it works for you, or try just unpairing your headset from your phone if yours was paired to both devices… or just try a PRAM reset without any of the other steps.

I tested for my original Technician class exam on July 15, 2006, and always expected I would upgrade to General or Extra at some point. I used my Technician quite a bit in the Santa Cruz area, checking in to weekly nets, playing around with APRS and some digital modes on 2-meters, doing some emergency communications when needs arose for Santa Cruz County, etc.

Over the years, I have spent less time on the radio, especially since moving to Bend, Oregon, which just seems a lot quieter and slower pace on the radio. But over the past couple of months, I decided it was time to upgrade to General so I could access additional frequencies and began the studying process.

I scheduled my exam to give me a target to aim for, and today I headed down to the library and met up with a group of people all taking their exams, many Technicians, two General upgrades, and one person testing for the Extra as a “practice test.”

Well, the studying paid off and I am finally a General. My goal was to finally be able to start doing some more learning and using of HF bands, allowing longer distance communications without the need for local infrastructure such as repeaters.

The thought is always that when “the big one” comes, be it the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake here in the Pacific Northwest, or the San Andreas or Hayward fault down in California, that amateur radio will always be there for communications. One of the topics that comes up is, “Who’s engineering do you trust more? AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, or a ham radio repeater on a mountain top held together with duct tape and baling wire?”

Either way, now I have the option of a third communications mode: If cell phones AND local repeaters go down, I will have the option of jumping over to HF!

I look forward to working with the various digital modes and especially in testing Near Vertical Incidence Skywave propagation which gives a communications range of 0–400 miles. So we’ll see what I do next!

I wanted to thank Joe Barry, K7SQ, Barbara Pace, K7RVW, and Loren Rasmussen, K7CWQ for taking the time out of their day regularly to be Volunteer Examiners (VE) and offer these exams for those seeking initial licenses or upgrades…thank you!

I also wanted to thank Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, for his excellent No-Nonsense Study Guides which were a huge help to me in my studying, along with the practice tests I took from a variety of sources.

And most of all I want to thank the two people who first really introduced me to amateur radio. Both of them are now silent keys, but their legacy lives on. Dan White, KB6TDW (SK) and Dick Mack, W6PGL (SK) both did a great job of showing me what could be accomplished with amateur radio and made me want to pursue it.

Is Extra in my future? Potentially… I’ll take a few practice exams, likely buy Dan’s Extra Class book, and see what happens :-) The jump to General opens up many frequencies and bands for me, I probably won’t feel too left out if I can’t access the additional Extra class frequencies.

Ever since Morse opened developer Tania Finlayson’s world, she’s been working to make it accessible for everyone. The team at Google with their Gboard have been working with Tania to let her use morse code to communicate.

I still plan on getting more efficient at CW one of these days. I’m more drawn towards digital modes overall, but it’s still a skill I would like to develop. Since I’m limited to antenna choices, I could reach further with CW than I could with HF phone, that’s the primary reason I like the mode.