[Elecraft] [P3] Reference level; scale

[Wes Stewart]

As a guy who had a hand in buying and/or specifying the purchase of millions of dollars worth of HP equipment (never bought any Agilent, couldn't figure out how to pronounce it) and who used a lot of it, I also think the reference belongs at the top.

But why not a spectrum analyzer mode and a panadapter mode?

--- On Fri, 7/30/10, Alan Bloom <alan at elecraft.com> wrote:

> 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