Greetings all...

Andy wrote:

A professional programmer who spent somef time working on waterfall palettes
for signal analysis once suggested that, it order to see signals separated
from the background by only a small amount, a waterfall should change
brightness rapidly and colour more slowly, even if some brightness levels
repeat over the dynamic range.  Working on the basis that most interest is
in weak signal resolution, and stong ones can be left to fend for
themselves,  he suggested a palette that ran from dark blue, through red to
yellow then back via green and orange to black.  (Or other  variants like
this) .  A bit weird but brightness as perceived by the eye is then peaked
part way up the signal range.

The dark blue could then be placed at the noise level, so the normal noise
spikes averaging 2 - 4dB above mean, say, would push towards red (also a
dark colour), but signals at 6 - 10dB S/N would show clearly as bright
centre optical-spectrum green/yellow.   Really strong sigs would be
orange/black but would not be hidden as they'd have brightly coloured
sidebands making them stand out against their own background.  I never tried
it - but may do now the idea has been awakened.

Andy   G4JNT
www.scrbg.org/g4jnt/

73,  Wolf  DL4YHF .