In some areas of ham radio having a fairly accurate measure of signal strength is more than "nice". On HF "who really cares" is what I am getting here on the list. But if you design, construct and try to get the optimum performance from your station, measurements become more than "nice". Of course most of you must realize I am talking about eme or moonbounce for my passion. Knowing if you are 0.5 dB or 1.0 dB over noise or under makes a big difference. (In fact I regularly copy eme signals that are -22 dB below noise). MY software measures the signal to provide me an exact level, frequency, and timing - its a synchronous digital mode).
Elecraft already admits to setting S9 = 50uV on the K3. The standard is 6-dB/s-unit. I have not measured or know how close this is observed in the K3, but I have a receiver that goes one better...it is calibrated in dBm and I have measured it with professional -calibrated signal generators to less than a dB accuracey. Guess what? It is a software defined radio *in fact it is a SDR-IQ*. Interestingly, it will display signal steps from 10-dB/div down to 0.01 dB/div. So I would maintain that any SDR, including the K3 can do this. However, this resolution can not be read on the linear s-meter scale in present use. Maybe some day there will be a numerical readout offered in the menu reading dBm or uV? It is all just software. No more from me on this - seems to be pretty thrashed already ;-) 73, Ed - KL7UW, WD2XSH/45 ====================================== BP40IQ 500 KHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com EME: 144-QRT*, 432-100w, 1296-QRT*, 3400-fall 2010 DUBUS Magazine USA Rep [email protected] ====================================== *temp ______________________________________________________________ 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
