Kiwi SDR software tuning aside of the pointed frequency

[Ray Lalleu]

When using the pointer on WF to change frequency,
if the mode is USB or LSB,
then the soft tunes aside, 1.5 kHz away from the pointed frequency, grrrrr....

Kiwi SDR is a receiver, not a TX designed for the 60m ham channels !

[Pigmeat]

A lot of them direct you to the 80 or 40 meter band. Some stick you on a time frequency. The simplest thing to do is type in the frequency
you want in the display and go from there. Going to AM is easy, just scroll to the box that says "AM" and you'll get a choice of "narrow", "wide", and a regular bandwidth. All you have to do is click on the box. SAM is I think Synchronous AM.(I never read directions) It lets you you choose from which side of the signal is best on a crowded band. You can go to the upper or lower sideband of the signal while it injects a carrier to give you an AM sounding signal, like God intended.

It's not hard, go to one and fool around, you'll get the hang of it no time.   

[Ray Lalleu]

A lot of them direct you to the 80 or 40 meter band. Some stick you on a time frequency. The simplest thing to do is type in the frequency
you want in the display and go from there. Going to AM is easy, just scroll to the box that says "AM" and you'll get a choice of "narrow", "wide", and a regular bandwidth. All you have to do is click on the box. SAM is I think Synchronous AM.(I never read directions) It lets you you choose from which side of the signal is best on a crowded band. You can go to the upper or lower sideband of the signal while it injects a carrier to give you an AM sounding signal, like God intended.

It's not hard, go to one and fool around, you'll get the hang of it no time.   

Yep, I uderstand all that. But often, to escape the splashes, I have to go to USB or LSB.
I even use SAM with the sideband selection, SAU or SAL. Alas, in those modes, all too often, the sync is lost, and the audio is mashed. And when I see a carrier on the waterfall, I can't tell its exact frequency, I point on it, and the software tunes 1.5 kHz aside ! Then I have to make the panel come back, but it covers about 40 percent of the waterfall range on my small screen !

[Shortwave_Listener]

The way I avoid that is by tuning in AM mode then switching to the one I am going to listen in.

[Pigmeat]

The way I avoid that is by tuning in AM mode then switching to the one I am going to listen in.

Yep, I do, too. Turning the magnification up on the waterfall is a big help, too.

[kris]

    Probably not everyone knows that the SSB modulation standard has been adopted, in which the audio starts at 200 Hz above the channel frequency. The initiator of this was the amateurs, recognizing that the lower range of speech frequencies (200 Hz) does not carry important information for the intelligibility of the message. You can clearly see in the enlarged waterfall that the modulation image is offset from the set reception frequency. Listening to music for me is already noticeably distorted.
    The Console software on my RX-888 has additional Wide-L/Wide-U mods that process the audio right from the carrier location. In practice, I use almost exclusively the Synchro AM decoder (1kHz synchro lag width). This decoder improves the stability of the reception, because it partially eliminates the effect of selective fading of the AM carrier wave. In addition to selecting the modulation bandwidth filter, Console allows you to move the left or right edge of the spectrum freely to cut out an adjacent interfering signal.
 This works very effectively even with strong CW signals.
I use basic AM modulation sometimes listening to Russian FBs on 100m, which have unstable transmitters, and correspondents can be out of tune by 2kHz from each other. This is in the +/_ 2kHz modulation band, so that both correspondents are understandable without retuning and searching for a new signal.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

When using the pointer on WF to change frequency,
if the mode is USB or LSB,
then the soft tunes aside, 1.5 kHz away from the pointed frequency, grrrrr....

Yes, I find this annoying but like many things I think that one becomes habituated to it and learn to modify my behavior.

This operation is different than, for example, WebSDR (e.g., Twente) but after many weeks of only using KiwiSDRs, I become used to it and attempting to use a WebSDR requires a few attempts to get through my stumbles as a result of the differences.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

The way I avoid that is by tuning in AM mode then switching to the one I am going to listen in.

Yes, also general tuning around in SAM or SAS in "large" frequency steps (greater than 1 KHz, for example) will generally produce a continuous tone when you finally stop and try to listen to an AM signal. This tone comes about because the inserted carrier that is inherent in synchronous detection (SAM, SAS, etc.) comes from a phase-locked loop (PLL) action (generated in software) that is not able to "lock" onto the AM carrier that you just tuned across because its lock range is much smaller than the tuning steps you were using.

The way to fix this is to momentarily switch modes to anything other than a synchronous mode (e.g., AM, IQ, etc.) then back into SAM or SAS, at which point the PLL can lock onto the AM carrier since the receiver is likely tuned very close to the actual carrier frequency and the PLL can lock.
 
In any case, I try to avoid tuning while using a synchronous mode for this reason but I sometimes forget and I use the method above to get out of the continuous tone mode and lock the PLL.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

Yep, I uderstand all that. But often, to escape the splashes, I have to go to USB or LSB.
I even use SAM with the sideband selection, SAU or SAL. Alas, in those modes, all too often, the sync is lost, and the audio is mashed. And when I see a carrier on the waterfall, I can't tell its exact frequency, I point on it, and the software tunes 1.5 kHz aside ! Then I have to make the panel come back, but it covers about 40 percent of the waterfall range on my small screen !

I understand the frustration.

I find that the default passband filters in SAL and SAU just barely include the carrier frequency and during fading, synchronization can be lost or come close to losing it. (This may have been improved in a recent software update.) To avoid or mitigate the possibility of sync loss when I am using SAL or SAU modes, I will usually adjust the passband filters to include the carrier and also more of the unintended sideband than is provided by default. This seems to lessen the possibility of loss of synchronization.

[Charlie_Dont_Surf]

This decoder improves the stability of the reception, because it partially eliminates the effect of selective fading of the AM carrier wave.

Yes and in many cases it can dramatically improve the quality of reception of very weak AM signals as well, "pulling them out of the noise" somewhat.