Hi Lance, > Indeed, activating the attenuator does improve the situation quite a bit but > as I operate 20M and above for the most part I do not want to operate the K3 > with ATT on all of the time.
I was going to ask. Assuming that "no ATT" is not a religious thing, and engaging ATT works, why NOT use it, if the performance of the AGC is the end-all kill-all aspect of the K3 for you? All that we are talking about is how much system gain is in use between the antenna and the analog to digital converter. 20m ambient noise here on my C31XR at 76 feet is around 1 uV here for SSB bandwidths, which IS engaging the AGC because it is S3. Use ATT before you reduce RF gain, as it provides the best headroom in the overall circuit. "RF gain" is applied in the IF amp at Q1, as can be determined by reading the schematics on the Elecraft web site. The other thing, have you tried setting CONFIG:AGC DCY to SoFt? Soapbox mode on: I think part of the reason for the continued reemergence of this subject is the p**s-poor performance of earlier receivers and that fact that their AGC and S meters typically did not engage until what was really S5 and reported it as S1. In other words we are expecting our new K3 to behave just as garbage on low signals as the old stuff, just because we're used to it. And when the K3 reports 1 uV as S3 and turns on the AGC, we think it's busted and noisy. In olden telephone days, the accumulated noise of strung together circuits created quite a bit of noise, and someone describing the other person on the end of a long distance call as "distant" was really a euphemism for noise. People complained a lot about noise. When the new "N" carrier systems came out and were being deployed, the engineers were proud that they had created a quiet system (they had) and would ease customer complaints about noise on the line. The telephone company was deluged with customer complaints that the lines sometimes sounded "dead". Telco was forced to spend a lot of money to retrofit a noise injector which was set to a minor level of noise. One of the maintenance tasks I had when routining "N" carrier was to calibrate the noise injection pot. They paid me real money to do that. To this day I think that was one of the silliest things going. Do we REALLY want to morph the K3 back to bad old days analog just so it sounds familiar? Can't we just figure out how this bright new digital radio is different, adjust and move on? I won't even mention RTFM for fear of having to dodge bricks. mode off. 73, Guy. ______________________________________________________________ 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
