[Elecraft] DSP vs. non-DSP portable transceivers

[Jim Brown]

On 5/22/2018 11:26 AM, Wayne Burdick wrote:
> The P3 panadapter, meanwhile, is actually a direct-sampling SDR, with its own DSP. It taps off the 1st IF, which is protected by the K3’s marrow RF band-pass filters. The P3’s noise floor is extremely low because it is also preceded by the K3’s preamp, LNA, and low-loss mixer.

Yes. AND in the hands of a knowledgeable engineer/technician, a near 
lab-quality test instrument, with a display that can easily be 
calibrated to the signal level at the antenna input. I've used it to 
measure occupied bandwidth of transmitted signals to precision of a few 
Hz, and the SVGA board, with it's separate, higher res FFT, improves 
that to one Hz. I own two other dedicated spectrum analyzers -- an HP 
8657A and a Rigol. They are not capable of these measurements, because 
they lack the frequency resolution (by a factor of about 500:1).

Many other modern SDRs also have this capability when used with suitable 
software.

73, Jim K9YC