They're not likely to see this, rolling up to Dayton, but rolling the s-meter up scale as you roll the RF gain back is making a digital radio behave like an analog radio just to keep from all the complaints that it's broke because it doesn't act analog. The designer knows full well that we tolerate changes very poorly, even changes that are huge improvements. Remember that the analog S-meter was a voltage on a bus that controlled gain all over the RX. When you manually reduced the gain, that changed the resting voltage on that circuit and "buried" any movement less than that voltage. Hence the familiar covering up of voltage changes for signals less than the increased threshold.
If one has chosen "absolute" s-meter performance which is already un-analog, it would be nice to see the input level regardless of the RF gain setting, and perhaps just slow "plink" only the top segment that would be "covered" with the analog convention. 73, Guy. On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:40 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire <[email protected]> wrote: > Sometimes we're just too picky about that "S-Meter". Many years ago (almost > before my time) a number of receivers had no meter but instead calibrated > the gain control in S-units (or the S-unit's ancestor, the "R-unit"). If you > wanted to see how strong the signal was, set the gain for a comfortable > volume and check the position of the knob. Of course 99% of us reported > signal strength "by ear" and didn't need a "calibrated" knob, Hi! > > I'm not entirely sure today's rigs are an improvement, at least in the area > of receiver gain control. They are, however, much more "automatic" and with > that comes limitations. I'm a heavy user of the ATTEN, Preamp and RF gain > control in any receiver. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
