[Elecraft] Speech Processors

[Julian (G4ILO)]

George,

Many years ago I had an outboard Datong RF clipper. I did some tests and 
came to the same conclusion as you, that it gave about 6dB more effective 
power than unprocessed speech subjected only to normal ALC limiting. My 
question is whether you would see anything like as big an advantage over 
the K2's in-built compression. True, in theory there will be in-band 
compression products that will make the audio sound worse than if 
processing is done at RF. In practice, though, I find the K2 usually gets 
complimentary reports on its audio. The effectiveness of the compressor is 
that the K2 seemed to have about 10dB more effective power than the FT-817 
I had, despite having only a 3dB advantage in PEP. I'm not sure any extra 
improvement would be worth the expense and complication.

As for cooking the finals, my K2 regularly copes with 4 or 5 minute overs 
of 5 watts continuous power, operating in data modes (thanks to the new 
SSTV MFSK mode.) I wouldn't have thought even an RF processor would push 
the average power up higher than that, while the kind of situations where 
you might want to use heavy compression, such as trying to work a weak DX 
station, would probably involve much shorter periods of transmission.

73,
--
Julian, G4ILO. (RSGB, ARRL, G-QRP, K2 #392)
G4ILO's Shack: http://www.qsl.net/g4ilo