I currently live in a townhouse and have made an offer on a few acres in a more rural area. I would like to measure the relative noise levels between the two locations to reduce the probability of surprises or disappointments should I close the deal. I have gotten access to a very good battery powered spectrum analyzer and plan to use a tripod-mounted 6 foot whip and a 20 dB LNA to measure the noise levels at each location.
While setting this up, I though it would be interesting to try to also use the K3 to measure noise with the same antenna (but without the LNA). I've written a Python script to control the K3 as it steps through each band and records S meter levels. I'm looking for recommendations on K3 settings for this purpose. Specific questions I have are: 1. Is the high resolution S meter command (SMH) the best way to measure received signal strength with a computer? 2. What settings for attenuator, pre-amp, and AGC will give me the most useful readings? Right now I'm using Off, On, and Off respectively for those settings. 3. What Mode and Bandwidth settings should I use? Right now I'm using CW and 200 Hz. I'm pretty sure I should be using a wider bandwidth and will try that tonight. 4. Is this a dumb idea? My first run through very late last night showed almost no variation across any of the bands. I did see differences between bands. Right now I pause for 1 second after setting band, mode, and bandwidth, and then another second after each frequency change (stepping in 10 KHz increments) for things to settle. I don't know the dynamics of the S-meter processing, so maybe I should be waiting longer. Thanks for reading this. Rick N1RM -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/K3-Using-K3-for-relative-noise-survey-tp7632955.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to [email protected]
