[Elecraft] K3 - noise reduction query

[Lyle Johnson]

There is an incredible range of characteristics to unwanted "signals" 
that we loosely call noise.

The K3 has an array of tools to fight noise, and sometimes they work 
well in concert and sometimes better alone.

There is an IF blanker with adjustable threshold and pulse width - but 
some impulse noise ay wider than the widest available setting and this 
is likely to include lightning-based pulses.

There is also a DSP-based "IF" noise blanker.

There is a noise reduction, or denoiser function available with a wide 
range of settings.

AGC settings can also affect the operation, and apparent effectiveness, 
of the DSP-based noise reduction and to some degree the noise blanker.  
There is a pulse function in the AGC system that you can enable or disable,

These settings may all interact to some degree.

As the station operator, you have a complete communications system to 
manage: antenna, feedline, QTH, desired path, time of day and so forth.  
The radio is one component of the system.  The K3 offers a range of 
tools for you to use, but in the end there is unlikely to be a "magic" 
setting that works for everything. If there were, we would have set that 
at the factory for you (and probably removed the settable "knobs" for 
you to adjust)!

I suggest that if you are having a severe noise problem, you experiment 
with the various settings - including AGC threshold and slope and PRE 
and ATT settings as part of the tool set - and note which work best for 
you in your system and under which types of noise and mode(s) of operation.

You won't hurt anything, and you may learn a lot.

And, yes, some radios may work better than others with some types of 
noise under some circumstances.

73,

Lyle KK7P (still learning after all of these years...)

> NO MAGIC BULLET.
>
>> I am hoping someone out there has come up with a magic bullet setting 
>> (or even a workable setting) that can be shared. This has been a 
>> summer with loads of lightning static.