Noise Blanker is Outstanding...

Dwayne_AB6A

On the 3905CCN net this evening and some awful noise on frequency. The noise blanker worked magic to minimize/remove the noise... I'm impressed!

J. Michael Dunlap

Dwayne

On the same net I tried many settings for the noise reduction.  I had very little success.  Now, before you become concerned, I am in a very rural Idaho county and have extremely low noise.  I think you were dealing with something more local.  I was dealing with the atmospheric noise and that most of the signals were in or just barely above the noise level.  I am pleased to know that if I deal with heavy local noise, that this feature will help A LOT!
 
I have you in the log and will immediately respond to your QSL with a QSL.  You had a great signal at my location.  I could barely hear the net control and sometimes could only tell he was in there.  There were a few stations louder than you, as well.

This was my first time with the Flex 6400 Maestro on 80 meters.  I was impressed!  The condions were extremely difficult and the radio performed like a champ.

K7MYU

Dwayne_AB6A

Very good! it was definitely local to me and i could see it turn off and on. Your card is in the mail!!

Russ Ravella

Hi Dwayne,
Pretty cool ! Do you have any idea what the source of the noise was?

Dwayne_AB6A

No clue - It was late at night and I had family sleep so I could not turn the place over looking for it on my own home. We have large city water tanks close by and stuff kicks on around 10pm. Noise was removed at around 70% but a couple of times there was some break through - Maxing the noise blanker to 100% did not appear to impact phone in any way.

Russ Ravella

Interesting.  Like all NB's it's case sensitive.  Sometimes when you'd think it would be effective it doesn't seem to do anything but I've had cases where I tried it not expecting anything and it helped a lot.  I don't get much actual ignition noise here though and I think that's it's primary target.  Glad it helped in your case!

Burt Fisher

On the 6400M I never got the noise blanker to have any effect. On an Icom 7300 the noise dropped quite a bit.

Mike VE3CKO

When I lived in a city lot nearly 2 years ago, NB and WNB worked very well in many instances for man-made noise, but my noise floor was still high never going below 7 - 9. In a city there was no doubt layer after layer of local man-made noise, the larger the city, the more layers of man-made noise to listen through. In my case it wasn't a very large city and using WNB enable me to actually hear stations I could not without it. Now some 22 months being out in the country witg a couple of neighbours, I have totally different noise with a noise floor is much more variant from 1.5 to 3 on the beverage 3 to 5 on the loop but then can go as high as 7. What a difference. Now the WNB has very little to no affect on this kind of noise, most I suspect being atmospheric. There is a horse fence about 1500 feet away and it radiates at 1970 and 3695 when turned on. Sometimes you can hear clicking every second or so throughout the lower bands but the NB does eliminate that.
Nothing has changed except location and antenna. Same 6700 radio. So should I blame the filters in Flexradio? No, but I do give myself some credit for picking a better QTH with a lot less man-made noise resulting in a much more favourable environment for playing radio.