[Elecraft] K3 BETA FIRMWARE RELEASE -- MCU rev 1.94

[Brian Alsop]

Dave,

I don't agree with your conclusion at all.  It just takes practice.   If 
you're having trouble crank the filter width of the DSP to a narrow 
setting and tune until the signal peaks.  That will be close enough.    
The extraneous signals from other stations and noise  within wide filter 
settings are much more of a problem than the on off nature of CW.

Having to accurately zero beat is much over rated, in my opinion.

The practice and "requirement" to zero beat really came from the old 
days where rigs drifted like crazy.  One had to start near zero beat to 
have a chance to be heard.  It wasn't at all uncommon to drift 
completely out of the RX passband while calling a station.   In fact, 
older more skilled ops knew which direction the rig drifted.  They would 
include this knowledge and start calling off frequency so that the drift 
would bring then to and through zero beat while calling.   It also was 
much more relevant when there was only a single answering station.  Now 
the name of the game is to stand out somehow-- be it strongest or most 
in the clear.    

"Call them where they are listening"  really applies.   I frankly don't 
see the practicality of using the auto zero beat function when a station 
is listening on ever changing frequencies that are not zero beat.   Thus 
there is also an "art" aspect to working stations.  

Of course we're talking CW here.   Interesting that nobody is 
complaining about not being able to zero beat in SSB.  I frankly find 
that a much more challenging exercise.  It certainly is mentally much 
more complex.   The algorithm seems to be tune until it sounds "right".  
Same with CW.
One has to experiment to define "right"

73 de Brian/K3KO


David Woolley (E.L) wrote:

> Tom Childers, N5GE wrote:
>
>>
>> In the Army they taught us to turn on the spot signal and tune the 
>> spot against
>> the received signal.  When you hear the warbling stop, you are zero 
>> beat on the
>> RX signal.
>
>
> That's easy if you are trying to tune against a continuous carrier, 
> but you are normally tuning against a signal that is being 100% 
> amplitude modulated at about 10 to 30 baud (12 to 36 wpm).  It gets 
> quite difficult to separate the amplitude modulation from the keying 
> from that from the beating.
>