[Elecraft] K3 receiver desensing on CW during contest

[Wes Stewart]

--- On Wed, 2/25/09, Bill W5WVO <w5wvo at cybermesa.net> wrote:

This point is brought home all the time here in Albuquerque, where we have to 
deal with the radiation from ten or more TV/FM analog transmitters 
line-of-sight on top of Sandia Crest. While all these transmitters except 
Channel 2 have fundamentals well above 54 MHz (I run a DCI bandpass filter to 
keep it out of my preamp), the accumulated grunge from the transmitters' 
perfectly legal low-level spurious emissions and passive mixes are enough to 
render 6 meters unusable for weak-signal work in the direction of the 
mountaintop. Since the spurious gunk is actually radiated on hundreds of 
different frequencies within the 6-meter band -- not to mention the broad-band 
noise coming from the same mountaintop -- there is little filtering can do 
about it. Hopefully this will be alleviated to some degree when the last of 
the analog TV transmitters finally relocate to UHF digital come June ...

[snip]

I don't know how to break it to you  but you're still going to have channels 7 and 13 after the transition.  The alleged purpose of this transition was to free up spectrum that could be auctioned off.  But a lot of broadcasters are going to wind up right back where they always were.  Pity, as an over the air TV watcher, I was looking forward to needing only a UHF antenna, but noooo, I will still have to have a high band VHF antenna for local channel 9.

Wes  N7WS