S6 line noise

KB4OIF

Good afternoon.   have read the manual a few times and the section about mitigating noise.  I have toroid cores on all my lines.  I have a constant S6 line noise.  I live in a subdivision that  has overhead lines.  Took my am radio up and down the street and found no buzzing.  I have a few wall warts in the shack but none of them seem to be buzzing.  I held the radio up to my all in one PC monitor and it buzzed like crazy.  Turned the monitor off but still have the noise.  

Ray Sylvester

take a portable am radio set it too 660 and walk around your house sniff everything that's plugged in.
when you get near your router it will go nuts .  ethernet makes a lot of noise from cables.  

Ray Sylvester

I went to your qrz page and saw  you are using 2 antennas that are prone to noise . I good rule of thumb on the antennas you are using is to decouple the feedlines at the shack end and to use a coax switch that shorts and grounds the unused feedline .  Alpha delta 2 pos or 4 pos are awesome. Balun designs sells a real nice coax choke for the feed line decoupling  you will need one for every feedline that comes into the radio room. its not a one and done but when you have the noise under control ham radio will be more fun for you 

William Osborne

I have a 6600M with the same problem, but some days worst than others.  It is stilling in the same spot with the same antennas and switches as my FT5000  was which never had this issue.  Is this issue really related to the Flex??

Bill--K5ZQ

Neal_K3NC

When dealing with these types of problems, its best to start out as simple as possible. If you have an M model (with console), turn off everything in your shack, disconnect everything from the back of your radio except the power connection and plug a dummy load into your radio. If its at all possible, see if you can use a car battery as a power source instead of your regular PSU. If you do not have an M model, use a laptop as far away from the radio as possible and power it on.  If you can power your radio with a battery, trip the circuit breakers in the house one at a time and see if the noise abates. These will help you get started in identifying the causes.

If you do not have the noise, turn on the shack PC and see if it comes back. If so, its the culprit. If not, continue connecting everything else in the shack one at a time and see if the noise comes. If so, replace the wall wart that caused it.

Sometimes power supplies can generate hash. Either the power supply for your radio or the power supply in your computer. These will help you identify the cause. 

If no noise, next connect the antenna. See if it comes back. Try a different antenna. Its possible your antenna is picking up noise from the electrical system of your house (I have had it when I put a beam on a 3' quadpod at the top of my roof!). If you have no noise with the dummy load but do have with all antennas, start back at the beginning of the procedure, turning off everything, going 0n battery if possible and laptop if required and turning off everything else. See if the noise is there. If so, its outside your house.

Its amazing the things that can generate these hashes. I have seen doorbell switches, garage door openers, plasma TVs as well as the most common which is electrical pole insulators aging and arcing. This is often best found with the AM radio and driving around your neighborhoos tosee where it is strongest. Our power company has a ham in its maintenance department and is very responsible to reports of problems. It really helps though if you can tell them what pole is generating the problem instead of just reporting S6 noise!

Hope this helps some.
73 es GL!
 

KB4OIF

Ok.  thanks will work on it tomorrow.  Been looking at things all day and the brain is tired.  

k0eoo

Bill, what band are you referring to and what is the S-meter reading on that band?  Non-SDR radios do not have calibrated S-meters and normally will not read the same as the calibrated SDR radios.  Here at my QTH I have an 80m coax fed dipole.  On 80m I read S-6 today at 3:45pm with the A-index at 17 and the K-index at 2 and on my dummy load I read S-2 (pre-amps at 0dB).  

Point being, just because you read a S-6 noise level on one of the low bands doesn't mean there is something wrong with your Flex SDR radio.

Try and see what your S-meter reads with and without a dummy load attached...

Joel H

Are you using wireless plugin internet extensions? They use the power line to transmit in the HF spectrum and noisy! Also if you have a Ethernet switch (1:4, 1:8 etc) check that for noise. I threw out one brand that was making a whole bunch of noise on HF. Now using a Trendnet which works well and is quiet.  Also check any LED switcher power supplies in your house. Found those in my kitchen counter lights to be dirty and replaced them. 
Best thing if you can, shut your house down and run the radio on a battery. If gone you know you are generating it. Then start with the breakers on-off until it stops.  Good luck.