N6ML pointed out: > One other thing you might lose is the ability to get the DX station back > into both ears with one button-push (SUB), which might be useful if he's > weak (like T27A was on my off-band dipole last night). Maybe I'm alone > in finding that I can hear the weak ones better when I have them in both > ears...
True - and with a weak signal you might also want to eliminate the 3dB passive splitter loss while listening to him. With the dual-RX technique (which I think is basically similar to what Icom calls "dual watch"), to get the DX in both ears takes some extra juggling (you have to hit A/B as well as SUB). So it would be wise not to forget how to operate in SPLIT mode just because you have a second receiver - with a weak DX station you might still need to operate using SPLIT. One correspondent also pointed out that I missed the worst possible mistake you might make while using dual-RX instead of split, namely to forget that you weren't using split and hold the SPLIT button - that would leave you transmitting on top of the DX! The dual-RX technique also assumes you have adequate roofing filters in both receivers - with this technique the filtering requirements for the subreceiver might even be more stringent than for the main receiver, since you really want to be able to copy the DX well, but you can get away with extra QRM listening to the pileup - all you need to be able to do is identify where the station being answered is, which doesn't require the same level of copy. One thing that might be worth trying in the receiver that's listening to the DX (regardless of whether it's VFO A or VFO B) is the DUAL PB filter with the context width cranked down to 400 Hz. The filter shape with this configuration is different from the standard 400 Hz DSP filter. The standard 400 Hz filter has a relatively square passband profile, whereas the DUAL PB filter has more of a cosine shape, i.e. it's more peaked on the desired signal, which may help the signal stand out from the QRM a bit better. 73, Rich VE3KI K3 #1595 ______________________________________________________________ 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
