Don't defer to anyone else's experience, use your own preferences! Some of this depends on your personal aural frequency response curve. My high-end response is down because of my age (I'm nearing my 62nd birthday), and perhaps some questionable decisions I made in the past about music volume, operating mainframe chain printers with the cover open because it's quicker to change paper that way, radio contests with the headphone volume up way too high in an attempt to dig weak signals out of the noise, and some exposure to Naval gunfire.
Some CW enthusiasts opt for relatively low frequencies because they are able to discern one signal from another more easily if the relative frequency difference is larger. Eric Scace, K3NA, is usually worth listening to (or reading) on a lot of topics; psychoacoustics seem to be of particular interest to Eric. He has an interesting post on the TopBand Forum on this topic: http://lists.contesting.com/_topband/2006-11/msg00205.html There's also a link to a hearing test to help you understand your own capabilities in that post. One of the most proficient pileup competitors I have ever encountered is Fred Laun, K3ZO. He regularly appears at the top at the Dayton Pileup Competition. Fred recalled that he used to hone his pileup skills when he was operating from Thailand. His was a rare DX prefix to many. He'd get on one evening and just work stations from, for example, Poland, ignoring all the others in the pileup for that evening. There's a post about Fred and his preference for low-frequency CW pitch here: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg51753.html And my ex-roommate Ward Silver has a couple of paragraphs on the ARRL Contest Rate Sheet: http://www.arrl.org/contests/update/index.html?issue=2006-12-13 Again, this is a personal preference issue, there are no "right" or "wrong" answers. It takes a while to get used to listening at lower CW pitch. If you're trying to dig a single signal out of the noise you may have one preference. If you're being called by a dozen loud callers and want to be able to pull one complete call sign out of the pileup each time, you may have a different preference. 73 de Dick, K6KR -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 12:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Elecraft] Filter questions >I prefer about 400 Hz, your preference may be different than this. Dick, What process did you go through to arrive at 400 cycles? I ask because I'm relatively new to CW and have experimented with the available frequencies in the K3, and find that if the signal is down in the noise, that higher frequencies seem to jump out of the noise better. However if the signal is strong, I prefer lower frequencies such as 400. OTOH, being relatively new to CW, I am open minded and defer to experience and would like to hear what you and others have to say on this subject. 73, Paul _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
