[Elecraft] Re: K3 AGC Adjustment Parameters

[Vic K2VCO]

adamkern at uchicago.edu wrote:
> Wayne,
> 
> I read your reply to this thread with great consideration.
> 
> I think your observation that most field testers did not
> adjust the AGC parameters is a good one.
> 
> However, I think that that K3--and the Elecraft product line
> in general--particularly appeals to people who value amateur
> experimentation.

I don't presume to speak for Wayne, but I don't see a problem here.

There are literally hundreds of parameters in a radio like the K3 that 
could be made adjustable. Some of them are extremely useful because they 
allow you to customize the rig for your personal preferences (like the 
AGC slope) and others because they are related to integration with other 
station equipment or your environment (like the high and low gain 
settings for the mic and speaker/phones amplifiers).

If everything that could be adjustable was, you'd have a huge menu, 
people would find it confusing and hard to use, and they would set 
things wrong and forget what they changed and how to reset it. It would 
not be a better radio, it would be a worse radio. One of the decisions 
out of the thousands that Wayne had to make was to choose a reasonable 
set of configurable parameters. Everybody might not agree with the set 
that he chose, but then everybody isn't happy with the size of the K3, 
or the available options, etc.

In the case of the AGC, he removed some things that were there before, 
so you might feel that you had lost something. Actually -- I hope I 
don't get into trouble for saying this -- there were a lot of things on 
the early field test units that went away as the firmware was developed. 
Some were there for the development team to tweak, some turned out not 
to be useful, some could seriously compromise performance, etc.

The AGC attack parameter is a particularly good example.  It was 
originally made adjustable so that the owner could find a compromise 
between fast AGC action and immunity to noise spikes that might 
inappropriately trigger the AGC. But when they came up with the AGC 
Pulse function, it was unnecessary. All it could do is make the AGC 
perform worse.

What Wayne did was make about twenty zillion interrelated choices, each 
one of which affected performance, usability, cost, sex appeal, and many 
other things. He made what I think is a radio with an excellent balance 
of all of these things.
-- 
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco