In an RF signal transmission network such as the reverse channels of a coaxial cable network, there is provided at least one adaptive equalizer for pre- or post-filtering inter-symbol interference in the transmitted signals, the adaptive equalizer having a series of coefficients for which values are required. In order to improve the transmission efficiency the preamble used in these channels is shortened by coarsely estimating the channel using a short “unique word’ placed at the beginning of the equalizer training sequence. The coarse channel estimate is crudely inverted to produce a set of equalizer coefficients which partially equalize the channel. By initializing the adaptive equalizer with these approximate coefficients, it is possible to reduce the length of the training sequence needed for the equalizer to converge.