It's a common and never-ending battle. One thing I was surprised by is how bad things can be on VHF. My HF reception is pretty reasonable, so I thought I didn't have any bad noisemakers. My 2 meter reception wasn't stellar, but I didn't have anything to compare it to, and it was good enough for my closest couple of repeaters. The thing is, a noise source may not sound like anything when you listen to it using an FM receiver -- it just covers up signals and makes them seem weaker. One evening, I happened to listen to a 2m simplex station in the car on my way home, and noticed that he disappeared as soon as I got to my driveway, and he reappeared when I drove a few dozen yards away. Got out the handheld scanner, tuned it to AM mode, and made a search, flipping breakers. Discovered a switching regulator for a light that was raising the noise floor on 2m. I built a linear regulator to replace it, and now I can hear dozens more repeaters, and my commercial FM broadcast reception is better, as well. More details of my noise problem here: http://ag6qr.net/index.php/2017/01/02/chasing-noise-sources-part-1/
In the last 13 years I have lived in 3 different places. The first place was terrible for noise , place 2 was OK ,, and my current place was a total DISASTER. I live at a commercial property with a small supermarket and several other small shops , 2 workshops , and 30 meters away there is a factory. During the day and for most of the night the roads around me a busy with traffic coming to and leaving this area. I can't complain too loudly because I work at these places , and I must live on site - its my job. But the noise levels have been off the charts ,, and are all locally made. I have now been here 3 years and have been reducing the noise sources one by one. Some I can't fix because I don't have complete access or authority but its not bad. A portable SW receiver in my house is still 20dB over 9 across all of HF with noise , but with my external antenna I have essentially no noise. Was it easy , cheap and fast to fix these problems - NO. Was it worth the effort - SURE. When a Ham says that he has noise and its bad and he can't do anything about it , , , I just smile - Really ? gregW OH2FFY
I recently got on HF again at my other house in the trees in Auburn, CA. When I listened to 40 meters, my noise was 20 over S9 throughout the entire band. I have no nearby neighbors there, so I started at the circuit breaker box. When I turned of the garage, the noise dropped to S4. Then it the garage, which is NOT even close to my radio or antennas, I started unplugging stuff. The noise problem was caused by two battery maintainers that are used on my little used vehicles. The noisy battery maintainers are this model. So now, I simply unplug them B4 getting on the air. -Don- Reno, NV
I've got a BAD 15m noise source here. Its driving me crazy to figure out what it is. I would think it is the switching PSU but I've used it in other locations with no problems. I don't have another one to try but I'll see if I can adjust this one. Tried 3 different rigs, 4 different antennas. Same problem. This is in the 15m JT segment... around 21.076. This is with the RF squelch/gain turned all the way down. S-9 over 80+.
I had the following appear on the bands of 20, 40,80, 160M (more than likely everywhere in between!): The culprit was a new touch lamp makeup mirror my daughter had in her bedroom: http://www.target.com/p/conair-174-...gclid=CPuV9Y_zrdMCFdmCswodaxMPkA&gclsrc=aw.ds It's NO LONGER a touch lamp, I gutted the RFI generator and replaced it with a simple ON/OFF switch. There is now peace AND quiet on the bands locally! 73 Kriss KA1GJU
When I sprayed my yard for weeds, I sprayed all my rf with the same spray. Weeds are dying. I'm giving the rf another dose next week if it is still there.
We all have our fun, or not so fun, investigations and searches into those nasty noise makers. I live very rural so I am one of the lucky ones in that if its a noise problem, it's typically something relatively local causing the issue. Here are my big three issues that took me many months to identify these culprits: - My biggest problem was an S9 noise on 80m, lesser on 40m (I never checked 160). This was an unworkable condition. And it seemed to be worse further into the late afternoon but not every evening, dah! It turned out to be a track lighting system in the dining room. The lights are halogen bulbs. I don't know enough about Halogen technology but when on generated S9, when turned off, zero interference. - This was my craziest rogue signal generator issue and one that would not be too common for the average HAM. For this one, even after turning all power off to the house and running the radio off of batteries, I still had interference on on 40m and lower. Lower the freq. the worse it was. I have what is called an invisible dog fence. It is a loop of wire buried about 6" under ground with a DC low power current running through it. When the dogs get about 6 feet near it, it sounds a buzzer in their colors. The dogs have been trained about this invisible wall for years and have not had to wear their colors in 4-5 years. So, I pretty much forgot about it. Then I remembered about it and my dipole ran right along the border of the invisible fence. Then I remembered the invisible fence has a battery backup so when you lose power, or turn off power like it did, it keeps running. The invisible fence is nothing but a giant loop transmitter. Disconnected the UPS and all the noise went away. I should try hooking my radio up to this thing sometime - The last issue, and not as big as a signal issue as the first two, was the Whilpool washing machine. I was getting interference on and off but did not consider the washer since it only occured periodically during the whole wash cycle. To be clear, this is a stackable (horizontal access front loader). They operate very differently than top loader washers. In that they just dont fill up with all the wash water at one time. It periodically squirts a little water at prescribed intervals during the wash cycle. Yep, that was the culprit. The washer main unit was fine, it was when some DC pump or servo cycled on to get it squirts of water that causes the interference. I mentioned this, after discovering this issue, and a friend said he had isolated his random signal noise to his next door neighbor that had a Whirlpool front loader washer.
Nice video. I wouldn't have just taken that thing apart and put it in the trash. I'd save the toroids out of it, then wailed on it with a hammer for a while, then I'd throw it away
I located a RF noise generator at the weekend - a charge base for an Amazon Echo is the culprit this time Suggest that you avoid this device , when the device switches on the battery charge mode (the LED's start to flash) the device gets really noisy.. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3T0jlGDLDc https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01LYK0R6T/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
