I got my zbitx 2 days ago and only had about an hour to play with it.? I thought I understood receiver sensitivity, but not I'm questioning myself.? I tried to contact my dad on 80, 40, and 20 meters yesterday daytime.? We are at about 75 miles so often only one band will work on any given daytime.? 80M is NVIS at night is very reliable.? ?The really strange thing was he could hear me on 40M, but I couldn't hear him on any band.? ?And he was running 500W at the end.??
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He's got a 160M horz loop, and I 80M horz loop.? Receive of a antenna is reciprocal of transmit, right?? It is a little hard to tune my antenna as I had to put another tuner ahead of my tuners for the lower scale SWR meter.??
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I guess the basis of my question is, even if the receive isn't sensitive on the zbitx, how can a receive be sensitive enough to have a high noise floor but not receive a signal that should be well over a the noise I hear very well. Or is this an SDR thing?? This is my first ham radio that isn't a old tube rig.??
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An education is appreciated
Cory Lytle KO4SWI