[Elecraft] PX3 issues / questions /suggestions

[Niel Skousen]

I was looking at the PX3 this morning, listening on 40m, and you could make a small display change to do #5 (well the second #5).    If the moving 'tick' marks at the top of the display went down instead of up, and the top line of the display was 'thickened'  representing the full band, then the display window could be shown as a light green section of the band.   The same as the rx bandwidth is shown on the center cursor.   As you tuned in the band, the green visible bandwidth within the full band would move giving you a sense of where you are within the band.

And I'm probably just in experienced with the PX3, but how do others tune to get something seen near the noise ?   Often I see something to check out, and once I start tuning for the signal I loose my context and either undershoot or overshoot the faint signal i was looking for.    I understand the use of the Markers to so this, but just to do tune / look I us

 
On May 27, 2016, at 3:31 PM, etksubs at gmail.com wrote:

> I recently bought a PX3 for my KX3, and I really love it.  I had played with panadapter software on my computer, but since I use a Mac the offerings are rather limited and even using Windows in a VM getting it to work the way I wanted was cumbersome to say the least.
> 
> The PX3 is great since it’s basically plug and play, and its size and portability are awesome!
> 
> So after having used it for a couple of weeks I have some comments.  I guess most/all are related to waterfall since I find that the most useful aspect of the product. I live in a condo so due to antenna limitations and noise floor the spectrum display alone isn’t very useful.
> 
> 1) The Freeze feature freezes everything.  It would be really great if it would just stop the waterfall (maybe the spectrum too), but still allow manipulation of other elements, e.g. markers.  I would use it if I were to see something I want to look at but maybe about to go off screen, so I’d like to move a marker over to that in order to switch frequencies, etc.
> 
> 2) Allow the marker line itself to extend into the waterfall, not just for history, to allow aligning with historical data.  It would be useful to align with signals that are there but have not scrolled off yet.
> 
> 3) Move the waterfall data on the screen when shifting frequencies in tracking mode.  I know you won’t have data for the new parts of the spectrum coming into view, but it’s hard for the user to readjust to shifting data that no longer corresponds to the spectrum above.  The same goes for fixed mode if you configure to jump a half span.
> 
> 4) Add something like a 3/4 - 1/4 FixMode option.  As I’m scrolling up frequency (or down) I have to wait til I get all the way to the end to see what’s ahead.  Of course enhancing tracking mode as above might obviate the need for this.
> 
> 5) Or maybe add a “shift view” that I can set to a Fn button and rotate the know to move the display left or right.  Currently I do this by switching to tracking mode to center the current frequency and then back to fixed.  Or maybe have “Center” in fixed mode center the current frequency?
> 
> 5) Add a full-band view.  I know you won’t necessarily have full-width data due to bandwidth limitations but it’s nice to see where you are in the entire band.  Just a nice-to-have thing.
> 
> 6) Add visual band end markers.  Also just nice-to-have.
> 
> 7) One quirk I see is when switching the tracking mode the Ref level is different.  It reports the same value in each, but the base level is obviously different based on the spectrum display behaviour and I have to readjust it every time.
> 
> Thanks for listening!
> 
> 
>  Thanks and 73,
>  Erik Tkal  -  W1QED
> 
> 
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