[Elecraft] Second receiver options ??

[Tom W8JI]

Chuck,

LP Pan mostly is a spot and click assist to operating, it 
really will not be a better or different second signal 
channel than the K3's audio. There is, of course, no weak 
signal diversity improvement from running LP Pan in one ear 
and the K3 in the other.

Stereo diversity reception that allows significantly 
enhanced weak signals requires significantly different 
antennas for each receiver input and also requires nearly 
exact duplicates of phase, signal processing time delay, and 
bandwidth in both receiver channels for maximum effect. 
Average signal-to-noise of the desired signal on both 
antennas also has to be about the same for maximum effect. 
It does no good to combine mostly noise from one ear with 
signal and some noise from the other.

There is a little improvement from antennas on each channel 
being different in polarization when spacing is close, but 
by far the most significant improvement occurs when the 
receiving antennas are a fairly large distance apart in 
wavelengths. Keep in mind "polarization" does not mean the 
physical layout of the antenna, but rather the actual 
response. For example my Beverages, although long horizontal 
wires, have only vertical polarization in the front lobes. 
If I diversity pair a Beverage with a vertical array, they 
must have large spatial separation (over 1 wavelength) or 
enhancement is far from optimum.

Another use of stereo is filling in holes in receiving 
directional patterns, like listen west and northeast at the 
same time using two different directional patterns.

73 Tom