[Elecraft] [P3] Reference level; scale

[Brett Howard]

I just got done spending a quarter million on two Agilent spectrum
analyzers and spend a good bit of time using them....  I find that for
the panadapter use case that having it at the bottom takes much less
getting used to that I'd thought it would.

~Brett (N7MG)

On Fri, 2010-07-30 at 18:43 -0700, Wes Stewart wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
>       
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