The advantage of controlling the gain manually is not an "old wife's tale". Rather, it's clearly just a technique that is not for everyone.
AGC will reduce the gain according to the strongest signal inside the I.F. passband. Manually riding the "RF" gain ensures that a very weak signal is not affected by a strong signal that is also inside the I.F. passband. Of course that means your ears could be blasted by that strong signal, which is why Wayne included a hard limiter that can be enabled to chop such a signal down to size, making it no louder than the weak signal we want to copy. It has become a moot point for many operators today who cannot read CW if they are hearing two or three (or more) signals within the I.F. passband all at the same time. For them, it's essential to have enough I.F. selectivity to isolate one signal and so AGC is just fine. But some of us have a lifetime of experience sorting out multiple signals with our gray matter between the ears and prefer to continue to do so -- probably until we all become SKs. 73, Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- From: elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-boun...@mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Wes Stewart Sent: Sunday, September 3, 2017 3:00 PM To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Noise Blankers Just a couple of points. In the K3(S) there is no "RF Gain" control unless by RF gain you mean "It's not the audio gain gain control." The "RF" gain control operates on the i-f amplifier, which is after the analog noise blanker. In this regard, it is little different from AGC, which operates on exactly the same circuitry. Why some people believe that they are better at controlling i-f gain than the AGC system does is beyond me, but old wife's tales die hard. If this is hard to fathom, watch the S meter as you reduce "RF" gain. The reading increases, no different from letting the AGC do it. Attenuation is a different matter. It operates at RF and is a viable tool. About noise blanking, I think I had a little to say about that almost 40 years ago: http://k6mhe.com/n7ws/Noise_Blanker.pdf Wes N7WS ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
