My CQ WW SSB experiences

I ran 12 hours of the CQ WW SSB contest this past weekend with my 6500 and WOW! Here are some impressions and a couple of problems. I have known about most of these since I got the rig in late Summer. The receiver is stunning.. filters are brick wall. I could just slide someone out of the bandwidth when QRM got bad. Best I have ever used. Between the filters and the extremely quiet rig, the 6500 made the difference in hearing the weak ones. The RX EQ let me boost and cut the receive audio and helped make some of the poor audio / muffled stations readable. I received many unsolicited comments on my audio.... I was usually running 230Hz - 2700Hz, sometimes down to 2500Hz when the band was really crowded. The dual panadapter let me keep an eye on the propagation of some of the other bands while working my main band. I didn't use the second Slice receive, just the pan... BTW, what a wonderful Saturday 10 Meter band! Signals on the pan from 28.300 - 29.250 Mhz. It looked like a New York traffic jam! Gripes & problems.... (I know these will be fixed in later releases, but this was my experience.) Noise Blanker: My local power line interference was back all weekend. The noise blanker helped a lot on weak signals covered by the impulse noise if I carefully adjusted the AGC-T and NB levels. But the display was often not very helpful on 10 Meters where it was worst. Tuning blind was not very fun after getting used to the panadapter. I found that the noise blanker was not very friendly to strong signals over S9. After a strong signal, I often had to turn the NB off and on, sometimes several times, in order to get it to "take" and start working again. The same was true whenever I changed bands, or changed antennas. It seemed as if the NB would sometimes forget what it was doing, or get confused by signals on the band, and just stop working. Then I had to cycle it, again sometimes multiple times until it started to function. Then it would work well again, until something in the RF environment changed, then back to the NB switch I went.... Noise Reduction: Not very helpful for the most part. It seems to color the audio so much that I have to really boost the RX EQ in order to understand anyone. Then if I forgot and turned the NR off before I turned the RX EQ off, the my ears got a severe beating from the inrush of High Frequency from the EQ. This needs attention. I imagine that NR is currently much more effective in CW than it is on SSB due to the high frequency roll off. I didn't need to try the ANF much, but my experience is that it also takes a lot of the low end out of the audio, making it a lot thinner. Not as badly as the NR does to the highs, but it is noticeable. When using it, I seldom need to turn it above about 5-10. Ease of use: I cannot imagine using this in a fast paced contest without the FlexControl Knob. (Thanks, Tim, for steering me this direction!) It will be really nice when full control functions are implemented, such as dual Slice control, RIT/XIT, etc. I really miss the TX Profiles on my 1500! It took WAY too many keystrokes to adjust my audio bandwidth in the middle of a contest. Persistance: Changing bands as often as I did during the contest really rubbed in the fact that I had to reset AGC-T, preamp, filter width & high/low frequencies, panadapter scale & baseline settings, DSP - NB/NR/ANF settings, and other settings EVERY time I changed bands. This was very annoying, and worse, wasted a lot of my time. Until I ran the contest I wasn't as patient with those who complained about this, because I didn't change bands that often in a typical session and it didn't seem to be that big of a deal. Now I am eagerly awaiting the release of v. 1.1. This will be a VERY appreciated upgrade! Hurry up January! I can't wait! DAX will be really appreciated when it arrives, as will be the repair of the Virtual serial port PTT (and CW keying, I hope!) Then I can use the K9DUR voice keyer, or the voice keyer in my N3FJP logging programs. Antenna tuner memory will be very much appreciated when it arrives. I used an OCF Dipole and a 31 ft. vertical. It would have been very handy to have one antenna on each antenna port and have the Antenna Tuner remember the settings for each antenna on each band so that I could switch instantly from antenna to antenna and band to band and not have to take several seconds tuning again. It would also keep QRM down, even though it only tunes with 10 watts. I ran for 7 1/2 hours on Saturday evening and about 5 hours on Sunday afternoon and my fan never seemed to kick in to high speed. If it did, it was pretty quiet. Operating from Indiana, starting at about 4 pm local time Saturday until 10:20 pm, and again from 1 pm to the end of the contest with a 2 hour break, I was able to put up the following numbers on 40-10 Meters: 178 contacts, 451 Total QSO points 168 Multipliers , Total score 75,768. Not a big gun score, but not too shabby for modest antennas and only 100 watts. In short, I loved running the contest with this rig. The receiver was far superior to my old, beloved TS-850SAT. It will be stellar once the DSP section is brought up to **** and the various persistances are added. Sorry this is so long, but this is the first chance to give a comprehensive performance review.