[Elecraft] Spectrograph and Filter Alignments

[Lee Buller]

I have some questions about filter alignment and I might have bigger problems....
 
1.  I have a lot spikes in the audio, especially below the filter band pass.  What is that? 
 
Discussion...  When I touch the center lead of the audio input to ground (any ground in the shack) I get hum.  Once the plug is in the jack it goes away, but I still think there is some in the audio...I can barely hear it in there...through the computer speakers.  I do not here it through the audio of the K2.  I wonder if there is a grounding issue in the shack?  When the local radio station is on, the station will rectify in the soundblaster and I can hear it when the center pin touches any ground.
 
I have a ground to a 6 foot ground rod inside the shack....I have a ground rod outside the shack where the tower is grounded as well and the 160 radials.  Nothing is tied back to the service ground.  I know, that is a no-no.  The two ground rods are about two feet from each other...one inside and one outside.  I should tie them together.  Everthing is tied to ground using a buss on the back side of the shack's table...except for the computer which is not grounded.
 
I think I have a problem here.
 
2.  I can get the displays looking OK on CW and match them in the REV mode as well.  The displays on SSB and RTTY are something else.  The SSB looks good with the basic filter...but when I kick in the 2.0 filter the line does flatten out somewhat (I do have the mod in with the transistor) but it is NOT that flat.  I would say hills and valleys and the top end does not drop off to 2.0  Same this happens to the 1.8 and 1.6 filter settings.
 
I would fooling with these last night and most were OK, but some were way off....  The rig sounds better too.
 
3.  And, maybe I am stupid in reading the book, but how to you change the filters to something else.  Lets say I have a 400 Hz filter...I want to change it to 500 Hz.  the instructions does not make sense to me.  Same thing goes from the SSB filters as well.
 
OK, I have shown my stupidity enuff.  Gee I feel dumb asking these questions especially the last one.
 
Lee - K0WA
 


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