[Amps] IM Distortion

[RFlabnotes at aol.com]

Ian:
       I read your description of the GW4RFX measurments, which strike me as 
being a quite practical approach to estimating splatter. Yes, this procedure 
could readily be codified and performed with modern analyzers (especially 
programmable ones.)

       Intuitively, this measurment procedure seems to fulfill our need to 
evaluate the amount of crap that many of us are subjected to on a daily basis 
by selfish stations and operators (it isn't just the big amps - I regularly 
receive signals from stations with very high performance anternnas that go 
well into the red on my S-meter, and parking within 10khZ of one of them can 
be futile.)

       I would also be an advocate of such a paradigm for this difficult 
measument issue. But before warming up my analyzer, I would like to pose one 
question which addresses the potential value of this. That is, how does this 
test(s) result that he obtained by such averaging compare with standard two 
tone tests in situ? Let me be a bit more specific.

       My suspicion (that means somewhere between an 'opinion' and a 'fact') 
is that if standard two tone tests were performed, using a few different 
audio frequencies and applying some weighting/averaging rule to them, were 
applied to the same setup, there would be a large correlation with the 
referenced results. I would like to see that done (maybe it has and the news 
just hasn't arrived here yet.) as a qualification for or against the 
spectrally averaged method as proposed. 

73
Eric K8LV