[Elecraft] [P3] Reference level; scale

[Alan Bloom]

As a former HP/Agilent engineer I agree.  Originally the P3 defined REF
LVL as the reference level at the top of the screen and SCALE was in
dB/division.  But I got talked out of it.

For a panadapter you generally want to set the noise to be near the
bottom of the display.  As you change the scale you don't want that to
change.  That's the reason for using the bottom of the display as the
reference level.

Also, it goes against my intuition that the reference level decreases
(becomes more negative) as you turn the knob clockwise.  Again, the
thought was that for a panadapter, people expect the signal to get
bigger as you turn the knob to the right.

Basically a panadapter and a spectrum analyzer are used for different
purposes so it makes sense that the user interface is different.
Hopefully we got it right.

Alan N1AL


On Fri, 2010-07-30 at 10:38 -0700, Al Lorona wrote:
> The thing that will take most getting used to will be that the P3 calls the 
> *bottom* of the scale the "reference level". On a typical spectrum analyzer the 
> reference level is usually the *topmost* line.
> 
> Additionally, a spectrum analyzer thinks in terms of reference level and a scale 
> (in dB per division), whereas the P3's "scale" is the total vertical distance of 
> its display, from top to bottom. In my mind, I'm going to be dividing this 
> "scale" by the number of divisions so that I can have an idea of the dB/div.
> 
> But these are artifacts of years of using HP and Agilent equipment. Time to 
> learn a new system, I guess. :^)
> 
> Al  W6LX
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html