[Elecraft] Wide CW Signals

[Jim Brown]

On Thu,1/14/2016 10:17 AM, Fred Jensen wrote:
> I think your P3 is OK.  I believe they are, for the most part, really 
> wide. 

Yes and no. We must learn to understand the P3 display. It reads the 
voltage at the antenna input vs frequency. A stronger signal produces 
more voltage at every frequency at which it generates sidebands. What 
tells us bandwidth is the DIFFERENCE between the peak of the waveform 
and the sidebands, and to get a good read on that, we need to put the P3 
in PEAK mode. The problem is that it's tough to do that in a pileup, 
because all the other signals are contributing to what the P3 sees in 
the sidebands.

Yes, some of those signals ARE wide, some are VERY wide. Many DXers only 
get on the air for DXpeditions to rare ones, many are OTs with OT rigs. 
:) There's one of these (but a contester, not a DXer) about 2 miles down 
the road from me. He only works SSB DX contests, and he wipes out the 
entire band with the trash from his rig. The good news is that he has an 
alternate QTH 20 miles down the coast, and since I moved in ten years 
ago, he now contests from there. :)

73, Jim K9YC