Welcome to the new FlexRadio Community! Please review the new Community Rules and other important new Community information on the Message Board.
If you are having a problem, please refer to the product documentation or check the Help Center for known solutions.
Need technical support from FlexRadio? It's as simple as Creating a HelpDesk ticket.

WNB ??

W5XZ - dan
W5XZ - dan Member ✭✭
WNB on 160 m ?

Answers

  • W5XZ - dan
    W5XZ - dan Member ✭✭
    edited June 2019
    WNB in the suburbs is a joke, on top band..really?

  • W5XZ - dan
    W5XZ - dan Member ✭✭
    edited June 2019
    at any gain level with a hi RDF rx antenna?? laughable performance, this QTH with s-7 line noise..

    come ON y'all....

  • W5XZ - dan
    W5XZ - dan Member ✭✭
    edited June 2019
    TZ4AM was on tonight...i NEED him on 160m !!!

  • W5XZ - dan
    W5XZ - dan Member ✭✭
    edited June 2019
    do I HAVE to put a BPF in front of the radio, since FRS has decided i may or may not need it???
     REALLY???

    really, you guys, give me some control over BPF's, sometime??? i really am not a total ****....

  • W5XZ - dan
    W5XZ - dan Member ✭✭
    edited June 2019
    but, oh well, you're not supposed to work a new one on160m in the summer solstice??? baLONey!!!!

  • Norm - W7CK
    Norm - W7CK Member ✭✭
    edited June 2017
    That was put very well Tim.

    Last month there was a storm that went across the US.  I had Lightningmaps.org up and running and noticed there were over 200 srikes per minute just in the mid west.

    One thing I've noticed is during high static caused by storms, I occasionally get a little bit better noise mitigation if I turn on the NB and run the scroll bar all the way to the right.  This sort of defies logic, but it does seem to help just a bit.  I haven't tried this since upgrading to v1.10 though.
  • Tim - W4TME
    Tim - W4TME Administrator, FlexRadio Employee admin
    edited June 2017
    One thing I've noticed is during high static caused by storms, I occasionally get a little bit better noise mitigation if I turn on the NB and run the scroll bar all the way to the right.  This sort of defies logic, but it does seem to help just a bit.  

    Not really.  Noise especially atmospheric noise is a complex combination of correlated and uncorrelated waveforms.  In this case, a combination of NB and NR used in small amounts can work together in a complementary fashion to provide some level of relief.
  • Mike VE3CKO
    Mike VE3CKO Member ✭✭✭
    edited June 2017
    I've done this too and it does help. Good to point out again WNB will remove the noise from the audio and the panadapter where NB will remove the noise from the audio but not the panadapter. I'm bookmarking your post Tim so to refer to it when I'm asked by wood-bee Flexers about WNB and NB.
  • John G3WGV
    John G3WGV Member ✭✭
    edited June 2017
    Great response Tim. I find the WNB particularly effective with power line noise on 6m. It's quite impressive to turn it on, wait for a couple of seconds while the 6500 thinks about it and... gone!

    I'm curious as to why WNB is also applied to the panadapter but other noise management techniques are not.
  • Ken - NM9P
    Ken - NM9P Member ✭✭✭
    edited June 2017
    John.  It has to do with the way the different functions work.  

    The regular Noise Blanker (NB) processes just what is in the receive slice itself and does it based upon the contents of the receive slice.

    The Wideband Noise Blanker (WNB) processes a much wider bandwidth of information and does it before the information is sent to the Panadapter/waterfall processing routine, or the slice receivers.  Thus it affects what is displayed across the entire panadapter/waterfall.
    For wideband correlated (regularly pulsing) noise, processing a wider bandwidth can often help detect the correlation more effectively, and thus, improve the blanking.   (Up to a point.  See below for additional WNB comments)

    Every receive slice in that panadapter is also affected by the WNB.  The WNB level control is actually on the panadapter menu, even though it is also replicated in the Slice DSP pull-down menu.  If you will notice, you can have two or more slices open on a single panadapter, but if you adjust the WNB control in any of the slices on that pan, the adjustment changes on all of the slices in that pan.

    But if you adjust the control on a slice in a different pan, the control on slices in other pans are not affected.

    (Additional WNB Observations:  I have noticed that if there is a very strong, correlated noise source in the WNB "window" that is NOT wide bandwidth, that it can throw the WNB routine off.  i.e. a severely overdriven AM broadcast station outside the 40 or 20 meter ham band will throw off spikes that are detected by the WNB routine and cause "Pumping" in the noise floor of the panadapter.  It requires turning the WNB level down, but unfortunately that reduces its effectiveness on the noise I WANT to remove.  think of it as similar to your regular noise blanker being overdriven by a nearby spattering SSB signal.)

    As far as NR - There may be no added benefit from sampling random noise from a wider bandwidth.  So NR (Noise Reduction) currently samples noise from within the individual slice.  I am speculating here, because this is not my major field of expertise.  So Steve, Eric, and the others at FRS can enlighten us on potential advantages of a wider sampling bandwidth on random noise reduction.  (I actually would love to be wrong here, indicating that FRS still has some tricks up its sleeves!)

    BTW... As others have said, I also have had some success with careful adjustment of WNB, NB, and NR levels while running them at the same time.  But they do seem to interact somewhat because they each change what the other is processing, so it is like fine-tuning a high-performance race car.  But the MOST important setting during the whole process is the AGC-T.  I have that control on my FlexControl Knob, and am constantly tweaking it while adjusting filtering, WNB, NB, and especially NR & APF (Audio Peak Filter for CW.

    Ken - NM9P

Leave a Comment

Rich Text Editor. To edit a paragraph's style, hit tab to get to the paragraph menu. From there you will be able to pick one style. Nothing defaults to paragraph. An inline formatting menu will show up when you select text. Hit tab to get into that menu. Some elements, such as rich link embeds, images, loading indicators, and error messages may get inserted into the editor. You may navigate to these using the arrow keys inside of the editor and delete them with the delete or backspace key.