[Elecraft] that Drake or Collins "sound"

[n2ey at aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett gazdzinski <brett.gazdzinski at verizonbusiness.com>

>On the kwm2 and kwm2a, cw was an afterthought, and done
>in a poor way. I think they used audio tones into the mike circuit
>for CW, and  maybe the ssb filter?

The KWM-2 and -2A did indeed use audio tones for CW. They used
a very high tone (to most CW ops) so that the unwanted-sideband 
rejection
would be good after the filtering.

>I don't think those rigs were great CW radios.

They were barely usable on CW IMHO. No RIT, no sharp filter, no way to 
turn
the AGC off nor to change its characteristics without a soldering iron.

It didn't have to be that way. A carrier crystal setup could have been 
used instead of
audio injection. Collins made narrow mechanical filters that could have 
been used, etc.

They were primarily SSB rigs, pure and simple. And they did that job 
very well,
particularly compared to what else was available to hams at the time.

Perhaps Collins was concerned that if they made the KWM-2 a really good 
CW rig,
it would hurt sales of the rest of the S-line.

Unfortunately, most of the HF ham transceivers for the next decade or 
so imitated
the KWM-2 in many ways.

>I don't suppose any of the old stuff would be any good in any
>contest, but maybe some of it sounded much better on all modes.

Depends on which rig and how it is used. I have used older rigs and 
homebrew rigs
using very old technology in contests with very good results. The rig 
you see on
my homepage was responsible for over 620 QSOs on FD 1995 with only 
simple
 antennas.

>Not everyone contests or goes after rare DX, but everyone
>seems to be stuck with poor sounding radios these days,

I'm not. Two reasons: Elecraft and homebrew.

>because they are built for contests, or for general coverage
>from 50KHz to 50MHz, or use noisy parts, or poor designs,
>or whatever....

A lot depends on what someone considers "good sounding" and "poor 
sounding".
In my experience there are all sorts of factors:

- Harmonic distortion (audio)
- IM distortion (audio & rf/if)
- Phase distortion (mostly IF)
- AGC characteristics (or lack thereof)
- Smooth vs. sharp rolloff of filter characteristics, filter ringing, 
etc.

What some ops describe as "noise" is often actually distortion in some 
cases,
AGC artifacts in others, and filter response in still other cases. Or a 
combination.

73 de Jim, N2EY







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