[Orion] Narrow SSB Filter Settings (Contests)

Bill Tippett btippett at alum.mit.edu
Tue Oct 7 08:24:37 EDT 2003


	I've played around with SSB settings and discovered
the following:

1.  I have the Ten-Tec 218 1800 Hz filter which I measured
at a little over 1900 Hz 6 dB bandwidth.  If you leave Orion's
Filters Menu in Auto, it selects the "1800 position" when
BW is set to <1400 Hz, making Auto mode incompatible
for SSB IMHO.  The solution is to lock the roofing filter to
1800 Hz, but a bit more tweaking is required to get it to
sound right.  FYI, the stock 2400 Hz filter is selected
at <2000 Hz in Auto mode.

2.  Just as with the FT-1000MP family, if you set PBT to +100
to 200 (whatever works best for your ears), narrow filters (either
DSP or roofing) are quite readable and you can tighten DSP to
~1600 Hz without losing too much readability.  In contests, I'll
lock my roofing filter to 1800 Hz, preset PBT to +150 and set
BW to ~2000 Hz to start.  If QRM gets rough, I'll narrow BW.

3.  I've also found Audio RX EQ of -10 seems to improve the
readability by emphasizing the highs.  I haven't used this enough
to know what is optimum, but will leave RX EQ highlighted
under Audio in contests so I can change it quickly if necessary.

	Thought I would pass this along.  I'll probably leave PBT
fixed around +100 any time I'm using SSB since it makes any BW
sound better to my ears.

				73, Bill  W4ZV 



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