[Elecraft] P3 cw waterfall

[Greg Troxel]

Jim Brown <jim at audiosystemsgroup.com> writes:

> For that, I set the top of the display for maximum averaging, and I
> set the waterfall as slow as it will go. I set the display height to
> 24 dB for day to day operation, and 42 dB in contests (and DX
> pileups).  I set the bottom of the display so that an empty channel
> shows up as tiny flecks of noise. I ALWAYS operate in Fixed Tune Mode,
> so that display averaging continues to accumulate as I tune across the
> band. When you do all of these things, random band noise goes away (it
> averages out to zero) so you're left with signals and coherent noise
> (like switching power supplies).

Can you explain "averages to zero"?  I would think that random noise
would average to something non-zero and then be comparitively reduced by
the averaging interval, and thus more like the normal noise level over
sqrt(N).  Perhaps this is then reliably below the threshold for any
color to appear, which would make it effectively zero.  (I have only
used a P3 once, at field day, so I may be confused.)

73 de n1dam