Terms such as "tightening up key shaping" and "soft keying" and "hard
keying" are neither used nor defined in the latest issue of the Handbook.
My 1998 issue of the ARRL Handbook discusses the relevancy of "hard keying"
on p. 15.7 and even uses that term to try and describe the effect. On the
same page, reference is even made to the "crispness of keying." Perhaps,
the latest editions have eliminated these ambiguous terms.
Your initial request was the following: "I would like to see someone please
take this discussion one step further and define the terms "hard" keying and
"soft" keying, and describe how either an operator or someone listening
would be able to discriminate between the two."
The best way to address this is through actual listening to a keyed waveform
that varies between 0 ms (i.e., a square wave), and a ramped wave with
leading and trailing edges up to 10 ms. This can be easily done on some
transceivers (e.g., TS-870S, IC-7800, and Omni VII) although the range may
be limited from 2 ms. to perhaps 8 ms. One can listen to the keying on an
external receiver while keying the transceiver and varying the wave shaping.
In addition to the perceived effect of hard v. soft keying, the ARRL
Handbooks tied-in the concept of "selective fading;" the ability to decipher
the transmission in the presence of ionospheric changes and included a
chart. That too may have been eliminated recently.
Unfortunately, there's is no way to quantify or define subjective terms like
"hard keying" any more than we can quantify a SSB transmission that sounds
"bassy," "tinny," "compressed," or "distorted." Distortion can take on so
many forms that the mere use of the word without further information is
meaningless.
Paul, W9AC
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