Skype Sound Problems

I am new to SimplyMepis and have been mostly impressed with the ease of installing and setting up SimplyMepis. There are a few niggling problems - one of them is with Skype. I have searched the forums for an answer but have not yet resolved it.

My problem is that after talking to my party for about 10 minutes on Skype, they cannot hear me. I can hear the other party through the speakers but they cannot hear me. I have to exit and re-login to Skype before my microphone will work again and after about 10 or 15 minutes it occurs again.

Any suggestions of how I could fix this would be greatly appreciated. The versions I have installed are:
Skype 1.3.0.53
alsa 1.0.14
SimplyMepis 6.5

Please advise.
Thanks