While DX operation demands certain artifacts of sound to be successful, the
issue remains that today's RF PA's operating on 13 volts have a significant
amount of transmitted IMD products. Increasing the average power with
processing only adds to the IMD artifacts which does affect other users on
the bands. Is this good operating practice? Certainly this is not the
way I was taught but seems to be the result of inconsiderate operators with
an "all for me" attitude and mentality.
Personally today I find many hams do have bad or poor sounding signals on
the air while very few having great sounding signals. The pollution on the
bands is clearly increasing, largely due to stations affected with RFI
issues, excessive processing and over driven stages from poor operator
techniques.
Just this morning on a 75 meter net with 85 stations checked in, there were
some 7 stations noted to have really bad sounding signals due to RF issues.
Of these 7 being 8.2% of those that checked into the net, there were 2
which were nearly unreadable although the signal strength was clearly above
S 9. These 7 stations were not using Tentec radios either. Once they
were advised of such and they reduced the speech processing level or reduced
the mike gain the issue was mostly cleared although RF splatter was noted on
voice peaks.
Folks, we need to not only press the radio designers and manufactures to
produce radios with better IMD characteristics, but also we must strive to
educate operators that "all knobs to the right" and efforts to make the watt
meter move higher up scale will not make for a better signal.
73
Bob, K4TAX
----- Original Message -----
From: <dhhdeh@comcast.net>
To: <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 7:57 AM
Subject: [TenTec] RF Speech Processor
Gary is 100% correct if your objective is to work rare DX in a competitive
environment. This can be configured as he describes with great success
towards that end.
Back in the 1970's one of my good friends and DX mentor who was, and is, a
top DX'er around here (#1DXCC, Worked All Counties X4, Worked All Oblasts,
high scores in the DX contests etc) ran a TR-7 with no on-board processor
into two VOMAX RF processors in series (very similar to the TT 234 and
today's digital 715) into a L4-B and then to a 4 element wide spaced 20m
monobander at 75 feet. A big gun DX'er he was.
It wasn't pretty sounding but there was no pileup of that era that he
could not crack with more than three calls. None.
I used to tell him that it sounded like "war" mode but it worked marvels
for his DXing objective back then.
My experience with the 715 using it with my Omni V.9, Corsair II and now
my Omni VII is that it gives my signal the presence similar to having a
600 watt amp in line. And if I really need that contact, I occasionally
use it in series with the rig's on-board SP with similar results to what
Gary describes, being careful of how much of each to use. No tower, beam
or linear here and with #348 for DXCC..... It works.
73 de N1LQ-Dave
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