Topband: Coupla things

[Shoppa, Tim]

Bob (K6NV) and I were having a off-list discussion and it got me wondering....

I heard some bad signals on the east coast here, but nothing memorable that I would describe as having keyclicks. I think I know what a keyclick is, I got lots of "OO postcards" in the mail for them and other maladies when I was a kid :-).

I would be surprised if things were much different on West coast.

Is it possible... that what folks are attributing to keyclicks in the transmitter, are actually AGC artifacts in their receiver?

There are several legal-limit contest stations within a few miles of me and I'm used to a strong-signal environment. And how it can pump AGC causing audible artifacts that are not in the transmitter. And I will generally disable AGC for anything but ear saving purposes. Why set AGC to make all signals sound the loudness as each other, or use AGC to make the noise be as loud as a signal?

I think it's possible that some of the modern DSP rigs may have unusual (impulse) AGC artifacts in a strong signal environment. Having noise blanker turned on may make keyclick-sounding artifacts too.

Tim N3QE