Newbie Ham Stumped!

[WB2WIK]

The TS-590S has a TX Monitor function which allows you to hear yourself as you transmit. Back in my old commercial radio days, we had two ways to monitor ourselves talking up records: "off the board" and "off the air". I always preferred listening to myself "off the air" rather than "off the board" as I could hear the audio processing at the transmitter site, including the slight reverb we added in those days. So, I am assuming that this radio is monitoring off the air, but I could be wrong. If it is monitoring "off the air", then my modulation and audio quality seem fine.

Unfortunately, it's really not. However if you have bad RF feedback which is garbling your modulation, I think you'd hear that in the monitor phones.

[K0RGR]

I would also check the output power on the Kenwood. There have been reports of low SSB transmit power on the 590, which were at least partly corrected by firmware updates.

A 23 foot vertical should work fairly well on 40 if properly matched. In this case, I suspect that there is a very lossy matching device used, which accounts for the magically low SWR. It might not involve an actual resistor, but I would not be terribly surprised if it did. Feeding this antenna directly with a hi-Q coil or a tuner at the base, bypassing the lossy matching network, would probably improve things. My 11 foot mobile antenna works Hawaii from Minnesota on 17 fairly often, and works Europe on 40 all the time.

[K8JD]

The more efficient trap verticals have tubing length settings, for each band, that are in the instruction book as nominal and can be slightly lengthened or shortened to optimumize the antenna for your particular conditions of surroundings and radial deployment. THAT AFFECTS THE RESONANCE OF THE ANTENNA.
Using an internal "tuner" has little effect on the performance of an antenna, just fools the final stage of the transmitter into maximum output. The antenna may not be radiating much power.
Tearing down a vertical for a low dipole will get you stronger signals stateside and less DX, generally.
I have both aVertical antenna and horizontal wire antennas to choose from depending on conditions.