Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio One of the most misunderstood settings on your radio is the microphone gain. You'll often hear people talking about adjusting it up or down depending on what they hear and the results are often displeasing to the ear. The very first thing to know is that the microphone gain is likely the single most audible setting on your radio, right after the tuning frequency. It's pretty much the first variable between your voice and your transmitter. Set it too low and you'll hear nothing, set it too high and you'll hear gibberish. I said it's pretty much the first thing, but it's not the very first. That's your voice, unique in all its glory, loud, soft, happy, sad, funny or not, it's the thing that your microphone captures to transmit. Closely coupled to your voice is the distance between your mouth and your mike. The closer you are, the louder, the further, the softer and the more background noise creeps in. As an aside, speaking of noise, there's background noise at play, but there's