This month, MASS legalized marijuana--and the noisy grow lamps started immediately, at S-9 levels on 80 and 160 at night. The TS-990 NB1 removes all of it. It is incessantly periodic in its spectrum. I don't smoke dope and have already left parties where the weed is overly fragrant. Why would you EVER want ANY kind of smoke in your lungs? Reminds of the the Levon Helm documentary where he is dying of throat cancer , and SMOKING weed to cut the pain.... There is no lung/throat cancer 'noise blanker'. But at least I can tell the cops where all the growers are...when they don't register, they are toast. HUGE fines. Hence the state revenue stream...
Here's a trick I use. Operating on a traffic or rag chew net when signals are good, just leave the AGC on but reduce the RF gain so that you can still hear the weaker stations OK. The AGC will cut back the stronger guys but the net result is that the stress from all that atmospheric noise is much reduced. There are times that it's almost as good as a local 2 meter net, meaning nice and quiet!! It really makes a difference to us old geezers who don't have much hearing left! I'm sure that those of you who have normal hearing won't comprehend what I'm saying but as the hearing goes so does the mind's ability to screen out what you want to hear from the noise. By the way I'm running a TS-440 with an MFJ digital audio filter. Your mileage may vary.
Likely they have to have a report of external evidence in order to "search" for RF. IIRC, there was a similar case about 10 years ago where cops were at some sort of hostage thing at a house, and while looking at the suspect house with an infrared scope, they noticed a neighboring house that was very hot. They used the infrared evidence to get a search warrant for the house, assuming it was a grow house. They raided the house and indeed found weed, but the case was thrown out because the court determined the infrared "search" was not a legal basis for the warrant. On the other hand, if the FCC had a report of RF interference, and in the process of investigating, they smelled / saw weed, they might be able to get local LEOs to pay them a visit.
MFJ has a noise removing box of some sort. You need to set up an external antenna for it that just receives the same noise. The box then removes that exact noise from your receive. Something like that.
Serious grow houses have an enormous appetite for electric power. The utilities are on the watch for spikes in billing, many times the average. Really ambitious growers also tamper with metering or otherwise bypass it and become guilty of theft of tens of thousands of dollars in that regard as well. (and create a nasty safety issue too) So tipping off the local electric utility to investigate a specifically located (DF'ed) and suspicious RF noise source signature may be another path toward prosecution. They generally pay more attention and put more urgency into that then just a complaint about a funny noise in your ham radio.
Regarding DF'ing noise, if you haven't tried it, a portable AM broadcast band radio with ferrite loopstick works well to start. Then use your VHF HT or scanner set to AM MODE and a hand-held Arrow-like beam for DF'ing within the final fractional mile. Another problem which I have had and hear about from others is noise from BURIED POWER FEEDERS. Because it is conducted more then radiated, it can appear to above ground antennas as being omni-directional, or coming from all directions. Especially nasty for ground mounted vertical antennas with buried radials, your antenna itself can appear as a radiator! However, it can be traced by turning off your house main breaker (to also verify its not an internal source) and then holding the portable radio up to the incoming feeder conduit. If you hear the noise signature, then start walking along the path of the feeder(s) holding the radio near the ground occasionally. I have walked right up to property lines or structures containing noise sources that way.
This would be in states where weed is still illegal. In any case, they could, but probably would not, act on reports of RF interference at a particular location.
That data is at least 4 years old, other companies have followed along. It is called the MFJ 1026, Ive modified mine a bit and have been using it for many years on 160-40M. In my case a DXE NCC-1 I borrowed was no better at several hundred $$$ more. Maybe that is why they came out with the NCC-2 currently at $750 and are following PT Barnums sage advice. Carl
On older, non product detector equipped receivers, such as my old Hammarlund HQ-100AC in the early 1970's, the only way one could copy SSB or CW was to turn off the AGC, turn on the BFO, turn down the RF gain fully ccw, and the AF gain all the way up. You learned to tune the BFO to one sideband or the other and use the RF gain for best volume setting. It's being equipped with no product detector made the s-meter useless in BFO mode. One learned the tricks mentioned here with state of the art radios very quickly, as it was the only way to bea able receive !!! I traded that HQ-100AC for an Allied A-2516 ham bands only receiver. It worked great with the RF gain all the way up on 20m and above, but the AGC was useless on WWV, 40 and 80. Again, the RF gain control brought the overloading of the front end back into the useful range. That which was an old trick now becomes new again !!! p.s.---I bought a basket case MFJ-616 several years ago and fixed it up. I always use that with my R-1000 receiver and FT-817 radio to make signals pop the same way as in the KX-2 video. Many ways to skin the proverbial cat....just have to find what works out for you the best !!!
One thing I didn't talk much about yet, is how well the 7300 allows you to adjust filters. That opens up yet another world of receive, being able to cut out much of what's above and below the strong part of a signal. For those of you with 7300s, if you haven't tried playing with it, you can find it under Menu/Set/Tone Control/RX/SSB/RX HPF/LPF. Try a setting of 200 or 300 on the low end, to 1500 to 1700 on the high end. Hiss is reduced, and even a slight toggle within these numbers will help on some signals. If the signal has a lot of bass, you can run it with 200 and hear well. If there isn't much bass in the signal, then cut up to 300. It will reduce hiss. Same line of thinking for the top end. This is an adjustment I would want a few dials for, on a more expensive upgrade from the 7300. Very useful.
I have a KENWOOD TS 570 and it has a DSP SLOPE and a NR REDUCTION and both aren't worth a shit. I set the AF GAIN FULL TILT and USE the RF GAIN and it works great!!!! Sometimes I employ the ATT and deactivate the RF PREAMP and adjust the AGC/TONE. The cw filters work good too!
I have no noise, audio or IF selectivity trouble with my late 80's vintage, but still hard to beat today, TS-950SD. They still command a very decent resale price.
