[Elecraft] Zero beat

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

No argument Scott. What I meant was that one doesn't have to match the tones
by ear to "zero beat" although when one does zero beat they end up being the
same frequency. 

Don brought up that issue that you mention that many suffer - not being able
to tell whether to raise or lower the frequency of a tone to bring them
close enough to hear the pulsation near zero beat. (He mentioned he has
broken a few guitar strings over the years trying to figure out which way to
go when tuning one.) 

That's not been an issue for me, so even if I'm hearing the beat at several
hundred Hz or more I can still quickly tune down to zero. 

But it's going to be very frustrating if one can't tell which way to tune,
making it impossible to zero beat efficiently. 

CWT is a valuable addition to the K3. I confess I often use it rather than
zero beat manually. It always gets me within 10 or 20 Hz. 

(Reverse CWT? Doo-dee-doo-dee...Do not attempt to adjust your rig. For this
QSO it is under our control...") 

73,

Ron AC7AC

-----Original Message-----

I must disagree with Ron about the "matching tones".  When you "zero beat"
the transceiver with a received signals using the sidetone or spot tone,
matching the frequencies of those two audio tones is exactly what you are
doing.  With a tracking sidetone, as in most modern transceivers, those two
frequencies are the same when the transmitter is on exactly the same
frequency as the received signal.  The PROCESS the operator uses to get
those two frequencies to be the same can ultimately be to listen for the
slow beat between them and to make the beat frequency got to nearly zero. 
That only works, however, after they are very close, and you have to somehow
get them that close.  You don't have to have perfect musical pitch to
determine whether one is higher or lower in pitch than the other, and that's
how most of us get close.  Indeed, for even the most demanding CW operating,
you don't have to be EXACTLY on the other station's frequency:  within 10-20
Hz is just about always close enough....

Scott  K9MA