[Elecraft] Filter questions

[Dick Dievendorff]

Don't defer to anyone else's experience, use your own preferences!

Some of this depends on your personal aural frequency response curve. My
high-end response is down because of my age (I'm nearing my 62nd birthday),
and perhaps some questionable decisions I made in the past about music
volume, operating mainframe chain printers with the cover open because it's
quicker to change paper that way, radio contests with the headphone volume
up way too high in an attempt to dig weak signals out of the noise, and some
exposure to Naval gunfire.  

Some CW enthusiasts opt for relatively low frequencies because they are able
to discern one signal from another more easily if the relative frequency
difference is larger.

Eric Scace, K3NA, is usually worth listening to (or reading) on a lot of
topics; psychoacoustics seem to be of particular interest to Eric. He has an
interesting post on the TopBand Forum on this topic:

http://lists.contesting.com/_topband/2006-11/msg00205.html

There's also a link to a hearing test to help you understand your own
capabilities in that post.

One of the most proficient pileup competitors I have ever encountered is
Fred Laun, K3ZO.  He regularly appears at the top at the Dayton Pileup
Competition.  Fred recalled that he used to hone his pileup skills when he
was operating from Thailand. His was a rare DX prefix to many.  He'd get on
one evening and just work stations from, for example, Poland, ignoring all
the others in the pileup for that evening.

There's a post about Fred and his preference for low-frequency CW pitch
here:

http://www.mail-archive.com/elecraft@mailman.qth.net/msg51753.html

And my ex-roommate Ward Silver has a couple of paragraphs on the ARRL
Contest Rate Sheet:

http://www.arrl.org/contests/update/index.html?issue=2006-12-13

Again, this is a personal preference issue, there are no "right" or "wrong"
answers.  

It takes a while to get used to listening at lower CW pitch. 

If you're trying to dig a single signal out of the noise you may have one
preference.
 
If you're being called by a dozen loud callers and want to be able to pull
one complete call sign out of the pileup each time, you may have a different
preference.

73 de Dick, K6KR






-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of paul at n4lcd.com
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 12:55 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: RE: [Elecraft] Filter questions


>I prefer about 400 Hz, your preference may be different than this.

Dick,

What process did you go through to arrive at 400 cycles?

I ask because I'm relatively new to CW and have experimented with the 
available frequencies in the K3, and find that if the signal is down 
in the noise, that higher frequencies seem to jump out of the noise 
better. However if the signal is strong, I prefer lower frequencies 
such as 400.

OTOH, being relatively new to CW, I am open minded and defer to 
experience and would like to hear what you and others have to say on 
this subject.

73,

Paul 

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