DOUGLAS ZWIEBEL wrote:
>
> I can't, for the life of me, figure why anyone would want to listen to
> cw with a really wide filter, but.....
>
>From K3ZO many time winner of Dayton pileup contests:
I just got back from Thailand so am reading all of this old discussion
for the first time, but as an
Orion owner, and since someone mentioned me in a post, I thought I
ought to comment.
I have always preferred to use the filters between my ears rather than
the ones that come
with radios and never liked narrow filters because the ringing bothers
me a lot. N3UM and
W4AU convinced me to go with the Orion mainly because they said it
"doesn't ring." Well
in my opinion it does, but you can zero out the ringing by using a
bandwidth of exactly
970 Hz, so when I'm on CW that's where my bandwidth is always set.
Precisely because
in a DX contest I had a loud W2 perch 670 Hz above me and used the
Orion's very FB notch
filter to notch him out, I now also use the notch filter set for 670
Hz tone and 300 Hz bandwidth
full time while on CW, because in the Orion the notch filter appears
to the user to act like another filter in series with the regular one.
This combination has given me reception pleasure like I
haven't had for years (maybe my Drake R4C with the Sherwood mods got
close way back when).
Nevertheless taking Tom's main point, narrowing a filter mainly so you
can squeeze up right close to another guy running on an adjacent
channel is not a good reason to use a narrow filter. In my experience
you always want to know what is going on around you as you run.
Narrowing the filter beyond a certain point deprives you of the audio
version of peripheral vision, and you lose if you
cut yourself off from what's going on around you that way. Tom is
right when he says that it will
lower your rate even though you think you're really banging away.
With a rig like the Orion the tone you set your sidetone monitor to is
also very important. I like to copy CW at 400 Hz, and I have been
surprised when people have commented that 400 Hz is a much lower tone
than they like to use. I believe it is established science that the
lower the tone you use to copy, the better your ear is at separating
out tones which differ in frequency very
little from each other. I actually thought I was using a rather high
choice of tone, as I recall
some articles I read years ago, perhaps by professional ship-to-shore
ops, advocating 200 or
300 Hz as their tones of choice.
I also believe in using a first-class pair of headphones. The
arguments about "communications quality audio" vs "high fi audio" have
never cut any mustard with me. In 60 years of using all kinds of
different receivers, speakers and headphones, I am of the firm belief
that the ear wants to extract as much information as it can get from
any receiving setup, meaning that whatever is the final
apparatus used to translate electrons into sound, it should be as good
as scientifically practical in transmitting the widest range of sounds
with as flat a response as possible. Therefore my German Sennheiser
headset has pride of place in my shack.
As those who are familiar with my views on the subject of people who
are quick to send "QRL" can attest however, this does not mean that I
allow someone else to determine for me what my optimum receiving
bandwidth should be. When I started contesting in 1952 nobody ever
talked about level playing fields or how someone stole your frequency.
It was just assumed that if things got too hot for you, you moved.
That was part of the game. We have since shot ourselves in the foot
by relegating our beginners to two meter FM where they got the idea
that all channels everywhere should be as crystal clear as the ones
they got started with at the beginning.
Back when men were men, a crowded band full of signals was a joy to
behold, a challenge to be reckoned with and mastered. I know this
discussion has been mainly about CW, but the best example I can think
of to illustrate this particular point was 75 meter phone on a winter
night with
the green tinge of aurora flickering on the northern horizon. Yes, in
the "AM days" the band on such a night would be filled with
heterodynes from one end to the other -- we called it "jingle bells"
-- and there were about three signals in the whole band that you could
actually copy, and yet the presence of all those heterodynes meant
there were sure a hell of a lot of us in there trying.
Over the years we have been afforded the right to QSY at will within
wide portions of spectrum
of which most of our bands consist precisely because we have convinced
our authorities that we, more efficiently than any other radio
service, have demonstrated that we can share limited spectrum capably
and get maximum production out of it. Be careful how much you wish
the QRM would just go away, the FCC's answer might be to duplicate the
60 meter experience on all our other bands.
And if I sound like a nasty old codger, well, having just turned 70, I
feel I have a right to act my age, and besides, if I don't comment
now, I may never get another chance.
Season's greetings to you all!
73, Fred, K3ZO
--
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