[Premium-Rx] WJ 8718 problem

[Stephen M. Linscott]

Howdy!

I was a member of this list years ago, and just rejoined. I have been  
an amateur radio operator since 1954, and have built many transmitters  
and a few receivers, as well as owning and operating a lot of  
commercial gear including premium receivers.

This is my first WJ. I'm getting a lot of distortion on CW sigs. I'm  
running the line audio into a small amplified speaker, and AM, LSB,  
USB, and ISB all sound fine. I normally copy CW with AGC off, audio  
set to medium loudness, and use the RF gain control to set level.  
Medium to loud CW sigs distort when I advance the gain past a whisper  
level. Of course, it's even worse when I try slow or fast AGC on CW.  
One of my rigs is a Sunair GSB-900DX, which sounds great on the same  
sigs. Even my FRG-7000 does a better job on CW, but of course it and  
the Sunair don't have the filtering the WJ does.

I've downloaded the 8718 manual, and can hook up the sig gen and start  
tracing, but if someone has seen this problem before, maybe you can  
steer me to the right board. I sure hope this is a problem and not a  
"feature" of the 8718! :-)

Thanks!

Steve,  W5EGP

ARRL Life Member
NRA Life Member
TSRA Life Member
Republic of Texas