[Elecraft] K2 insensitive on 20...or is it?

[Cathy James]

I am seeing some odd behavior on my K2, and it may be just in my 
imagination.

On 40, with its normal higher background level of QRN, I can easily get 
strong signals and strong noise levels.  With the AF and RF gains turned 
up, I have comfortable armchair reception.  If the S/N ratio is bad that 
night I may not get an intelligible signal, but it is clear that things 
are working nicely.

But when I attempted to look for QSOs in the recent Run for the Bacon, I 
not only found very few CQers on 20, it seemed that both their signals 
and the background noise (which of course would be lower on 20 anyway) 
were very weak.  Even with the preamp on and the AF and RF gains at max, 
I don't feel that I have armchair copy even on the *noise*.  The S/N 
seems pretty normal, but I feel as though I can't turn up the volume to 
make the combined S+N very loud on the speaker.  (Again, this problem 
does not exist on 40.)  The noise level on 20 does change as expected 
when I vary the filter width.  If I switch to USB/RTTY mode with wide 
filters and tune in 14.070, the strong PSK signals there just about blow 
me out of my chair, so it isn't always insensitive...

I am probably just imagining this.  Has CW on 20 been lousy lately?  Any 
objective way to test it?  I am a pretty inexperienced op who has really 
only gotten serious about CW in the past 4 months, so I don't have much 
experience to draw on.

Cathy
N5WVR