I almost always have the sweep turned on...but I only really use it
when the band is sparsely populated. Why, you ask, do I leave it turned
on if I don't use it much of the time? I can't stand that huge blank
area of the display. I know, that sounds really stupid, but it's true.
When I am tuning the bands, and I look at that vacant real estate, it
is actually distracting to me. I keep thinking I am missing some
functionality or something. Perhaps it is just a subconscious hang-up,
but it does really bug me.
I would be really happy if TT could throw something in there when the
sweep is off (not that I am unhappy - see 160m report below). Perhaps
they could use that area to display such things as frequently used menu
data, like AGC settings. Perhaps they could put a clock display there.
It just seems such a waste to have that area blank. Maybe this could be
part of the "I want knobs to directly access AGC functions" solution...
160M report: I was having trouble getting to sleep last night and I
checked 160 meters. Wow. It was hopping. But, I found that I had an
unusually high QRN level. Someone using a bad electric blanket or
something, but holy cow, it was bad. Normally, with my past rigs, I
would have just shut the rig off and went back to bed. Now things are
different. With the arsenal of weapons in the Orion, I was able to
eliminate the noise and work a few new ones! And this was on a band
filled with huge signals. Normally you can't use a noise blanker with
that much noise and large nearby signals. All I had to do was tighten
up the roofing filters and/or use a combination of the DSP NB and NR
and I was in business!
Kudos to TT.
Regards,
Marty Ray, N9SE
On Feb 17, 2004, at 12:08 PM, Bill Tippett wrote:
In a contest, Sweep is useless since it shows a band is filled
with
signals...but I already knew that! When DX conditions are really good,
it is useless for similar reasons, you need to actually identify the DX
stations to know which one you might need. In a split DX pileup, it is
not as effective as actually locating the station the DX is working
with
the Sub Receiver.
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