[Elecraft] Its alive, k2 #3183

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

You would expect quite a change in the background level from one band to
another - even between 40 and 20 meters but most certainly between, say,
80 and 20 meters. The noise level should be MUCH higher on the lower
frequency bands.

If it isn't, there are two possibilities:

The ICOM is very noisy, and so what you are hearing is consistent
internal noise on every band. I'd be surprised if that were the case,
but it's possible.

The ICOM AGC is much more "aggressive" than the K2s, pulling up the
background noise on the higher bands to equal the noise level on the
higher-frequency bands. 

Personally, I rather dislike AGC for that reason. It's great to avoid my
ears being blown off by a rock-crusher signal while tuning across the
band, but by and large it only masks what is actually going on and makes
the higher-frequency bands sound a lot noisier than they really are...

As for whether you are hearing all you can hear - the ol' "pull the
antenna and see if it gets quieter" trick tells the tale. If the
background noise drops off when you disconnect the antenna, you are
hearing all that you can ever hear... That comes up a lot with K2's,
because the low-current-drain audio amplifier doesn't make as much audio
racket in the speaker than some of the bigger amplifier IC's in other
rigs. Still, the sensitivity is all that can be used. More gain only
makes things louder - it doesn't pull in any weaker signals. 

Ron AC7AC
K2 # 1289

-----Original Message-----
Still not sure about the k2, my icom 706 has the same sound on all
bands, where the k2 varries in the sound of atmospheric noise. Time will
tell, might send it out for calabration, if I cant find help locally.
Dwight     N4GSD
Elecraft K2 #3183