I never realized how useful the waterfall could be until I bought this radio. You literally can see signals under the noise because you can see coherence compared to randomness. You can also see large swaths of the band. If you are monitoring 6M for an opening for example you can close down the panadapter to view a wide swath of band
Here I am monitoring about 200 khz of the 6M band including the beacon band. I notice some white dots streak down the screen. I am also monitoring the DX cluster and see activity so I decide to investigate. Unfortunately the white dots have scooted off the screen. No problem. I merely go back in time using the screen memory
You see the mouse next to the white dots. I double click the waterfall and my radio tunes to the area of the band where the dots occurred,
No more coherent like information is noted BUT the cluster notes there is activity on this freq so I'm zeroed in if something should arise.
Earlier I was working DX on 15M. Here are some examples of how the waterfall works in a weak signal DX scenario. You may have to expand these pics using right click>new tab>ctrl mouse wheel to + - the pic.
I saw the weak line and clicked the line on the waterfall. I had my filter set to 100hz and the APF on. I could barely make out CW but I tuned to peak. It was ZM90DX in New Zeland calling CQ. He was exactly 1 dB over my noise. I called him and logged him in less than a minute. He was invisible on the panadapter but clearly visible on the waterfall. I decided to see who else I could bag using this method.
Next
Next
ZY14AC in Brazil. Geeze what's with all these wacky calls? This guy was loud. I put this in here for comparison. He's so coherent I can read his code off the screen!
Finally:
7X4AN in Angola I can barely see him on the waterfall. He is virtually under the noise. But I tune everything in and wait... and wait... and pretty soon he pops out of the noise enough for a contact. Pretty cool huh?
73 W9OY
