Gang, I chkd out the noise blanker on my Orion I with v.2.054 firmware today on impulse noise, and found the software blanker to have a slight effect on wider BW (3 kHZ+) settings. Typically, I would have to set it to level 8 or 9 to hear any effect at all. On narrower BW settings, it had no discernible effect. The HW blanker seemed to work fine. 73, Jim W8ZR