I used my K3 with 3.03 Beta during the Russian DX Contest last weekend. During the contest, I had the opportunity to play around with the AGC settings in the beta firmware 3.03, and what seemed optimal to me is right in line with what Dave K6LL recommended.
First Choice: AGC Off, RF gain between 10AM and 2PM, depending on incoming signal strength. This provided the cleanest reception of all signals. While strong signals did occasionally blast me out, I was still able to hear very weak signals with no problems. Using the RF gain control, I was also able to thin out most pile-ups, then bring up the RF gain to work the weaker signals in the pile-up. I spent a lot of time last weekend operating on 14.007 and 7.008. Second Choice: AGC Fast with the following AGC parameters set: AGC DCY: Soft AGC Hld: .30 AGC PLS: Off AGC SLP: 0 AGC THR: 8 AGC F : 120 AGC S : 20 The new firmware AGC settings were almost as good as AGC Off, but not quite, and these settings did not reduce the need to turn the RF Gain down. On the same frequencies above, turning the AGC to Fast would raise the background noise level and IMD level just a tad; signals were not quite as clean as with AGC off, but it was a definite improvement over firmware 2.82. For the casual op, these settings would probably work well. I also agree with Dave that the most important thing is to keep the RF gain control down. That's a good rule of thumb for any radio, not just the K3. Dennis W1UE ______________________________________________________________ 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
