I mentioned the great reports I was receiving with the AFR station (All-FlexRadio), and as being heard is the the easy part of making QSO’s, it seemed a good time to talk about the “Ears” of the AFR station.
There are two parts of most aspects of reception – hearing the raw signals and having a method to reduce the signal to a particular station which you want to make a QSO.
Across the panadaper SSB signal traces crowd the screen. Use of the various signal processing settings mitigates some of the crowd, but there remains a lot of signals to pick through.
Think of this like going to a crowded party where everyone is talking. There are so many simultaneous conversations that one has to concentrate and focus to pick out just one. A hard of hearing person may hear only a fraction of the conversations, and because of their lower ability to hear also misses much of the general “conversation buzz” that good ears need to work to pick through.
The AFR station is good ears for sure. And I need to carefully use the software tools and my own hearing processing to pick out stations. The challenge is to focus in on just one station.
FlexRadio has a number of videos on how to manipulate SmartSDR to achieve optimal QSO rates. As fair warning, if you want to simulate the deafness of legacy radios you will need to work harder at tweaking settings in SmartSDR. Conversely if you want to have run rate with the leaders in the pack, your SmartSDR settings will be less intrusive.
One obvious factor in this listening part of the equation, is the great performance of the Tennadyne T-12 Log Periodic Antenna.
I can hear you now!
73
Steve
K9ZW
With Varying Frequency - Amateur Radio Ponderings 