[Elecraft] Rx comparison test with the K2

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

> I carried the K2 out to my noisy car this evening and tried the NB.  .. it
does a very credible job on my ignition noise.  With > K2 preamp on, the
ignition noise is +/-S8.  With the blanker, maybe S2.  Maybe we
> need a two-section blanker like some of the rice boxes have.
> 73... Ed, W5EJ

That's great Ed. Sometimes I find that I must turn on the preamp to get the
Noise Blanker to fully kill the noise, even though it definitely is not
needed to copy signals without the noise.  Even when set to low threshold,
the preamp is sometimes needed to get the levels up where the blanker can
deal with them effectively.

That's a bad practice, of course, since it brings up all the signals and
degrades the overall dynamic range of the K2, but the K2 has such a great
range that I've never seen a problem doing that. Indeed, I see a lot of
posts from ops who run the preamp most all the time when, operated properly,
the preamp should be used very rarely, if ever, on any band below 20 meters.

Another tribute to the great receiver design in the K2.

Ron AC7AC
K2 # 1289