[Elecraft] P3 cw waterfall

[Fred Jensen]

While everyone [but me] likes the look of the color waterfall, you might 
try selecting the monochrome version in the P3 menu.  Guest ops who can 
actually appreciate the color display have found they can find much 
weaker signals in the monochrome option.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the Cal QSO Party 1-2 Oct 2016
- www.cqp.org

On 12/9/2015 4:42 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
> On Wed,12/9/2015 1:10 PM, Barry N1EU wrote:
>> Is the waterfall speed adjustable?
>
> Sure.
>
>> Any brilliant insights on optimal cw waterfall setup gratefully
>> appreciated!
>
> I don't use the waterfall to copy CW, I use it to find weak signals, and
> to find empty holes in a crowded band. 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).  Set the display
> width depending on what you're doing at the time. For example, to
> monitor a quiet band for activity, I typically set for 100 kHz or 200
> kHz. In a contest, I'll set it for the width of activity for that
> contest. For a DX pileup, I go about twice as wide as the pileup, with
> the DX at one end.
>
> It can also be quite useful to assign commonly used settings to the
> soft-keys. I assign the Fixed Tune Toggle, the Peak/Average Toggle, and
> the display widths that I most often used. For the P3 that I use for
> spectrum measurements, I also assign the Capture to RAM command.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC