The Relationship Between Squelch and RF Gain

Well ya! Look at my avatar!

 

Was it that homebrew paintcan dummy load filled with radioactive unicorn crap?

 

I got it from a guy in New Mexico. He said he had an old gallon paint can that had lead paint in it before. I knew lead would be good for RF shiedling, that JC Penny would do 8+ on a certified bench.

Turns out it was an old gallon sorghum can. You could still see Karo on the old label. When I keyed up and it got hot, it smelled delicious.

 

If you really want to do it right, use 450 ohm ladder line terminated with alligator clips and banana plugs.

 

We kinda put this thread into the noise floor. Sorry, OP.

 

A stock out of the box modem should still hear the thread at 100 db down.

 

I don't use squelch too often because it is such a hard cut-off. It cuts out too many weak signals which you may want to hear.

I use rf gain just to take the edge off the white noise so it isn't so "sharp". Just enough that it won't give me a headache listening to it for hours.

You do get used to white noise if you listen to it often. You develop a mental noise filter over time and you don't even notice that it's there. It takes a while.

Squelch is nice when you are running through a city or next to power lines and there is alot of rf interference. By the time you use rf gain to reduce the noise you can't really hear much anyway so might as well just squelch it out.

I think it's just personal preference. I do think squelch works better, more forgiving, if you bump the RF gain down just a touch before setting the squelch. Squelch only, and wide open rf gain, seems to cut too much out.

 

Back in '75, we put a set of pontoons on my IH cabover with a 290 Cummins and a 13 speed with two brownies. Floated it over to Gilligan's Island loaded with bananas, Dinty Moore beef stew, and ### wipe. Well the sea water ate up the turbo when I got there, so the Professor whittled me one up with bamboo and coconuts. Still running up and down the east coast last time I checked.

 

I hauled a coil once. Tied it down with mechanics wire and Wrigley's gum. Hauled it from Philly to Hiroshima for rebuilding the aftermath of the bomb.