[Elecraft] Chasing the numbers

[Alan Bloom]

On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 11:06, Darwin, Keith wrote:

> I did my comparisons a few years ago so what follows is my recollection
> of my tests.

...

> Drake 2B vs. K2
> 
> The Drake is a fabulous sounding rig.  Very clean, smooth, sweet.
> Unfortunately, it has a very aggressive AGC so you'll never hear a quiet
> band as the AGC ramps up the gain when there is no signal to provide a
> constant full-blast noise floor.
...
> I also recorded CW signals and examined their waveform.  The Drake's AGC
> was rather slow to kick in so the leading edge of each dot/dash had a
> 1/2 to 1 cycle spike that was 2x the height of the rest of the signal.
> After a cycle, the AGC had caught up and the rest of the waveform was
> much more controlled.  Interestingly, this leading edge spike of sorts
> did not add any nasty artifacts to the audio.  

I had a 2B many years ago.  The thing that absolutely amazed me about
that radio is that you could run full QSK with the AGC enabled.  I never
saw another receiver that could do that.

Al N1AL