Weak receive on 6300

coveredup

Seem to be having a different (lower)  level of reception with my 6300 radio than my buddy's 6500 Flex.   

Noticed tonight that I couldn't hear him but he could pick me up fine.  So we started to check various settings.  All seemed fine, but when he looked at my Flex PC panadapter he notice that I was not receving anything close to what he was receiving.   Now of course we are two different radios ( a 6300 with 2.1.33.106 --- the one with weak receive ) and (6500 with 3. --the one with better receive )  and of course different Antennas.    It just seems odd that the 6300 seems to be able to Transmit well, but has a receive problem.  ?  

I understand that I have given you very little info,  but wanted to run this by you guys at this point.  I think we will bring another radio over to the 6300 station and see if reception is better with a change in radio --- next?    I have attached pic's from both radios -- 6300 first 

Russell Stringfield

It's all in the antenna, height and location.

Bill W2PKY

Look at your “S” meter and pan adapter, you are experiencing strong noise interference. 

Paul - K6HR

The 6300 is picking up a noise source. That's exactly what my panadapter looked like when I had an S9 noise problem.  In my case it was a bad/loose coax cable connection to the antenna. When I tightened the connectors the noise disappeared. Does it all disappear when you disconnect the antenna?

Bill -VA3WTB

Yes I see an S9 noise. you will hear very little with that.

FISHULA X

 Did you check your SWR?  you may have a bad jumper or water in your feed line/ coax.
          Check your swr  on a frequency that you used previously and let us know.

James Del Principe

The above comments are correct. The RFI is so strong it is swamping any signals. You can see it is repetitive across the band.   Is this true on other bands?   Yours is around - 90 on the panadapter while your friends is around - 110.     My average background on 80 Meters is around - 115.
Find the source of that interference!

Duane_AC5AA

As noted above, look at your noise level - running right at -80 dB.  Now take that line and draw it across your friend's panadaptor display.  Yep, all his signals would be buried under the noise also.  You don't have a weak receiver, you have a LOT of noise.  Even more than I do, which is a lot!

N8AUM

OH YA, LOTS OF NOISE !  But I have a question about his S meter. The bandpass area is just under -80dbm. Why is his S meter reading about +4 ? 

David Decoons, wo2x

I agree, you are receiving interference. Try enabling the WNB button under DSP tab on slice. Set the slider to 93 and see if it helps.

Dave wo2x

Keith Mitchell

I had a noise pattern that looked similar, turned out to be my air conditioner. 

W5UC

Do ordinarily use "ANT 2" to receive and transmit on? I have accidentally wound up on the wrong antenna myself in the past.

coveredup

OK changed back to ANT1 turned on WNB-94 and by-passed all  -Tuner - SWR meter - patch cables --- still lots of noise --



Also looked at another Band 40m 



Looks worse ---  must have something wrong with Ant or coax or sometype of noise interference in house or outside --- working on that next 

THANKS to all for the great suggestions  ---   thanks very helpful

James Del Principe

Looks like an external source of interference. Can be a charger, AC adapter, HVAC, water heater, plasma TV and more.  Start flipping breakers in your home one at a time. There can be more than one source also.   Best of Luck, Jim

coveredup

Yes -- will start turning off breakers....   what about using my UPS to run the receiver,  and turn off the comp-lete house?  

Clay N9IO

Unless you have a stable battery source the UPS is a great idea. Hope you find it right away and that there is a quick remedy. Good luck. Clay N9IO

VE7ATJ_Don

I have the same problem on 40m.  It turns out to be my LG fridge.  I've tried putting EMI filters in the fridge's line, but that didn't have much of an effect.  It just seems to be putting out RF in the 7mhz range for some reason.

coveredup

OK -- Turned off all of house except radio/computer  --- noise level went down --- nice 

had my wife watch as I turned on breakers one by one... she didn't notice anything -- but noise was back when I got back to radio.   As a bonus -For some reason- I guess having the power off knocked out my Internet.  Go figure.    I am thinking the noise is not immediate but takes a bit to crank-up or down.  Now that I figured out the Internet thing I will go the other way and turn off with her watching.  

Bill -VA3WTB

I wonder if the noise is from your router? try just killing the power on the router.

coveredup

a question on SWR  --  -- on 80m  able to trim to 1.5  \\\  on 40m   can do 1.09

coveredup

What are you seeing in the 7mhz area --- lines like me?  see pic above 

coveredup

OK -- looks like two problems... 1) is new LG washing machine ( has computer )... and 2) CoMCAST Cable TV Box -- TV only no DVR.    --- COMCAST Modem and Router seem OK 

Chuck N0OHL  

James Del Principe

1.5 is plenty close enough. 1.09 is near perfect. Folks worry too much about SWR in most cases. Unless power folds back, don't worry.    73, Jim

David Decoons, wo2x

Contact Comcast and explain the problem. They may be able to substitute another box. Does the existing box have a "brick" power supply or just a power cord with built in supply? I've seen those bricks radiate noise.

Contact LG. They may have a rework kit with new harness that has ferrites installed. My friend did that with a new range.

Dave wo2x

coveredup

This Cable box power is a BRICK -- so it must be higher wattage than my other Cable boxes which are just wall warts( those seem to have little noise ) 

Patrick

These days noise mitigation is a necessity.  Getting rid of noise is a time consuming exercise.  But you have to start somewhere and that point is to make sure your grounding is good, including any towers and masts.  Next is your station grounds and make sure to check the bonding to your ground point.  Next check for noise from power sources in your house, wall warts, led lights, tv, cable modem etc. If noise is still there, one thing I did was to build line filters for my ham station 115v ac my 220v ac for the amp and my  tv/audio systems.  Those filters actually reduced my background noise by about 8db.  That is on top of the reduction in noise from grounding my tower properly.  I eliminated lots of noise from fixing all the wall worts.   Keep trying as common mode noise comes in from every where.  

Paul - K6HR

Check out this very informative article on Amateur Radio Station Grounding: https://www.bwcelectronics.com/articles/WP30A190.pdf 

After proper grounding, RX at my station became much quieter,
I have S3 noise level now. Very quiet for my location!

Also see: http://k6hr.com/index.php/2018/02/08/grounding/

HTH

Patrick

I am adding this comment in relation to the line filters I built.  I built them to mitigate interference from 80 and 160 meter signals from my own station that was causing problems to other systems in my house.  The ends of my 80 and 160 antenna are very close to the house and caused lots of coupling of RF to the house wiring.  The filters cured 100% of the 80 meter problem, and about 50% of the 160 m problem,  as measured by the power level required to cause problems.  Power level used to test 1Kw.  An unanticipated result was a big improvement in the AM broadcast band noise level, which reduced to -120 dbm from -100 dbm.  Evidently I was getting common mode RF from the local AM broadcast stations which are all located 6 miles from my home. Great reception of local AM band now, with reception of AM band DX!  My last RF susceptibility problem is in my electric coffee grinder which occasionally starts up when I am on 80 meters and it is not coming from the power line.  Still analyzing this one, go figure......

Patrick

Some detail on the filter:

I used both type 75 and 31 toroidal.   I wound about 5 turns on the power leads on each toroid set separately in series.  I used standard electrical box’s and appropriate connectors.  A receptacle was mounted with face plate and a pig tail to the wall.  The ground, neutral and line were wound in parallel.  Ground was not isolated.  This filter greatly reduced low end noise.  The type 75 ferrite attenuates down to 150 kHz and the 31 material overlaps from 1 to 10 MHz a critical area for common mode and conducted line noise.  If anyone wants more detail, please e-mail me via the address on QRZ.com