[CQ-Contest] Receiver adjustments in CW contest conditions

[jpescatore at aol.com]

I mostly leave my K3 filter at 500hz and use RIT from my Kpod knob thing. There are a few situations where I'll adjust:
S&Ping to work a weak mult between loud stations is about the only time I'll go down to my 250 hz narrow filter, but it works pretty well for that. I've adjust the wide/narrow button on the N1MM bandmap to do that. Working EU stations in 160 tests is a good example.
When forced to "share" a run freq when the rate is too good to abandon, I will shift the bandpass back and forth a bit to see if I can put the offending "sharee" off the edge.
Based on various recommendations over the years I twiddled my AGC settings to where they seem to keep away pileup mush most of the time. But occasionally there are just too many zero beaters or just a puddle of equal strength weak signals and I'll fiddle with the RF gain control, but that is rare.
I've never had a receiver (including the K3S) where the noise reduction/blanking is of much help, almost never touch that. The  auto notch works great on SSB but isn't functional on CW.
Every now and then I'll open up the bandwidth to 1khz and just marvel at how Fred K3ZO can do all the filtering in his head!
73 John K3TN