Getting the most out of your HF radio (be it for swl, amateur, utils whatever) usually ends up in someone telling you to ride the rf-gain manually. That leaves out a lot of detail, and a newcomer usually goes right back to listening to an S7 noise floor.
So although the video here is demonstrated using the amateur bands, it is general enough to be used by anyone. Thought I'd drop it in here, because not ALL of us are amateurs.
The bullet points here would be:
1) Roll your rf gain back to about S1, just tickling the meter. Otherwise you are activating the agc with noise already.
2) If necessary, turn OFF your preamp.
3) Test your setup merely by removing your antenna. You can tell if you have gone too far with gain reduction, if by removing and reattaching the antenna, you don't hear any increase / decrease in noise.
4) Simply crank your audio gain up a little to compensate.
S-meter readings are a valuable tool, but one can get so used to the swinging eye candy, that trying to make it dance can actually degrade reception and over time, you can get used to the wrong adjustment and spend much of your hobby disappointed or frustrated with a noise problem that may actually be tolerable!
So although the video here is demonstrated using the amateur bands, it is general enough to be used by anyone. Thought I'd drop it in here, because not ALL of us are amateurs.
The bullet points here would be:
1) Roll your rf gain back to about S1, just tickling the meter. Otherwise you are activating the agc with noise already.
2) If necessary, turn OFF your preamp.
3) Test your setup merely by removing your antenna. You can tell if you have gone too far with gain reduction, if by removing and reattaching the antenna, you don't hear any increase / decrease in noise.
4) Simply crank your audio gain up a little to compensate.
S-meter readings are a valuable tool, but one can get so used to the swinging eye candy, that trying to make it dance can actually degrade reception and over time, you can get used to the wrong adjustment and spend much of your hobby disappointed or frustrated with a noise problem that may actually be tolerable!