[Elecraft] K3 Noise Reduction

[Brett Howard]

I have to agree fully that in the CW land I find that I rarely ever go
into look at NR.  When I first got the radio I was in there trying it
all the time cause I came from Kenwoods.  But soon after playing with
all the settings across many differing condx I found that its just best
to leave it be and use the width knob cause the NR don't do diddly for
me 95% of the time.

If its an already strong signal and its at slow speeds then NR can tend
do help but it doesn't do much more than simply turning the width down
does.  Perhaps I'm just perceiving it differently in that my Kenwood had
a 500Hz narrowest filter...  When there if there is a good strong signal
thats going slower then sure we're ok and it helps but when you're at
narrower widths there it doesn't do much.... But honestly I don't know
if it really can do much once you're down that narrow there is a lot
less data to play with.

~Brett KC7OTG

On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 14:14 -0700, WILLIS COOKE wrote:
> David, I am a mostly CW operator with only an occasional SSB contact or contests.  I find that I can copy signals on my K3 that I cannot copy on my TS-850, but only a few very weak ones.  The most effective control against noise that I have found is the Width control and in 160 and 80 meter very noisy contacts I find myself at 50 or 100 Hz width.  I find that the signals all sound noisy unless they are very strong, above S9 which are rare in today's propagation.  I can make the signal sound a bit less noisy with the NR, but at the expense of copy ability, especially with code speeds above 20 wpm.  I have never found the NR to be useful for a CW contact.  SSB contacts, even with a setting of F1-1 are distorted enough to be difficult to copy.  For noisy SSB contacts turning off the AGC and reducing the RF Gain seems to be the effective tactic.  
> 
> I have been reading what people have to say on this forum and I get further confused about how to properly set up the AGC, NB and NR to make them work to my advantage. I find both of my 20 year old Kenwoods more pleasant to use (a TS-440 and TS-850) but I can work signals with the K3 that I can't work with the others.  The NB is more effective with either of the Kenwoods.
> 
> I still think I am doing something terribly wrong with the K3 and I need more contacts to figure it out.  It seems that only 2,000 or so QSOs is not enough.  I need more experience with Ham Radio, perhaps.  Fifty three years does not seem enough.
> 
> Willis 'Cookie' Cooke 
> K5EWJ
> 
> 
> --- On Wed, 4/29/09, David Gilbert <xdavid at cis-broadband.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: David Gilbert <xdavid at cis-broadband.com>
> > Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 Noise Reduction
> > To: Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> > Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 1:41 PM
> > Is most of this discussion on NR in the K3 from users who
> > would like to 
> > improve the SNR on louder signals for easier listening in
> > noisy 
> > conditions?  
> > 
> > I get the impression we have people expecting different
> > things from 
> > these controls. 
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