recommended noise reduction device

kb2huk

Hello , I have a 6600M with a noise problem . I just purchased a yaesu ft10 and that radio is much quieter than my flex , so I want to do something about it . any ideas (have already went through house with breakers off running rig on battery ) thanks John kb2huk

Jim K4JAF

What criteria are you using to compare the noise level of the 2 radios? IE, same preamps or lack of, AGC vs AGCT, filters, etc.

Also what is an FT10? Perhaps you mean the FT101? Jim K4JAF

Mike VE3CKO

The FTDX10 is new trimmed down version of FTDX101, a single VFO.

Butch

I use a Timewave ANC-4 Antenna Noise Canceler which I have connected through the RxA In/Out ports, and activated via the LOOPA button (under the ANT menu). It has been helpful for reducing local noise, and typically drops noise by approximately 2 S-units.

WX7Y

The Timewave ANC-4 Antenna Noise Canceler is great unless you have a 6600 or 6400 which they left off the LOOP ports which was a big mistake in my opinion UNLESS I missing something, couldn't have been that there wasn't enough space on the back panel on such a huge case.

I use the ports for the Filters and a Daisy chained Receiver overload devices which if your in close proximity like a multi radio contest or a near by neighbor running a lot of Power is a necessity to protect your receiver over and above what the Radio provides.

I have both the 6700 and 6600 and sure would be nice to have had the LOOP through's on the 6600 like the 6700 has.

BG5ILX

FLEX has a very high noise floor, and I still like traditional machines

Brent61

KF4HR Could you post more information or even a picture of how you put the ANC-4 into the antenna loop. I read on the Timewave site that you should turn off the ANC-4 when you tune your antenna. Do you do this with having it in the loop? I have a 6500 and I think the ANC-4 will help me out a lot.

Thanks

Butch

Hi Brent61. There's not much to it. You'll need two PL-259 (male) to BNC (male) coax jumpers. Here's what I used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D1BJM22/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

One Jumper goes from the "Rx Ant A In" BNC Connector on your Flex, to the ANC-4 "RADIO" Connector (J2)

The other jumper from "Rx Ant A Out" BNC Connector on your Flex, to the ANC-4 "MAIN ANTENNA" Connector (J3)

After you adjust the ANC-4 for minimal noise, leave the ANC-4 Power On. To activate (or by-pass) the ANC-4, click on the LoopA button on the SmartSDR screen. The LoopA button is found under the ANT Menu on the side of the SmartSDR screen.

Hope this helps.

KF4HR

Butch

Brent61 - One other comment I forgot to mention. Much of the performance of the ANC-4 will depend the Noise Antenna you use. I found the short Noise Antenna that comes with the ANC-4 not very useful. My suggestion is to experiment with different lengths of wire (ideally wire lengths that are non-resonate on the ham bands) for your Noise Antenna to maximize the ANC-4's performance. The idea being, you want your Noise Antenna to maximize capture of noise, while minimizing the amplitude of wanted signals.

GL

KF4HR

KD0RC

What I do with my ANC-4 is loop the noise antenna around the known noise producers in my shack. Lets me get a really good null on them. I still need to do something about some noise from my neighbor's house. I think I will put a short dipole along my fence to see how that works. I originally put a long wire out, but it was on my deck in parallel with my G5RV, and it picked up too much desired sig and not enough noise. Always a work in progress...

I do not have loop connectors on my 6400, so the output of my 6400 goes straight to the ANC-4. The antenna side of the ANC-4 then goes to the input of my amp. That way I never put more than 100 watts into it (it is designed to tale up to 250 W).

73,

Len, KD0RC

Butch

Len - I've been noticing that different Noise Antennas seem to work better on some bands than others. Something I may do is try using several different types (and lengths) of noise antennas, connect them to a remote RF switch so so I can remotely select between different Noise Antennas as needed.

I'm not familiar with the 6400 but that's interesting the 6400 doesn't have loop connectors. As you probably know the ANC-4 has a -6db insertion loss. This becomes apparent when connected to my Rx A Loop, but thankfully, in most cases, the advantage of reducing noise outweighs the ANC-4's insertion loss.

I've never run RF power through my ANC-4. Just curious, when you run RF through the ANC-4 are you having to contend with the -6db insertion loss when transmitting (reduced power output through your ANC-4?), or does the ANC-4 go into bypass when you transmit?

KF4HR

KD0RC

The ANC-4 does go into bypass on transmit. The 6 dB loss almost kept me from buying one until I realized that it was actually an advantage. On no bands, 160 - 6 do I ever use 32 dB of RF gain. On the lower bands, I run -8 dB and need more attenuation so the additional 6 dB is welcome. Sensitivity with these radios is certainly not the problem. In a noisy environment (including atmospherics), the issue is getting enough attenuation.

An antenna switch for the noise antennas is a great idea. You can even parallel them without degrading performance, but you can wind up with the situation where nulling one noise source peaks another. As long as the noise peaks are not at the same frequency, this is not really a problem, it just means fiddling with the phasing control more.

73,

Len

HCampbell WB4IVF

Some good information from W8JI on several noise cancellers, including the ANC-4 and MFJ1026 (he designed the MFJ1025/1026 and DXE NCC-1):

http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/Topband/2013-11/msg00249.html

https://www.w8ji.com/mfj-1025_1026.htm

I have the DXE NCC-2, which is the follow-on to the NCC-1 and adds internal TR switching. It works very well in attenuating locally generated noise. The NCC-2 manual contains good information on antenna configuration:

https://static.dxengineering.com/global/images/instructions/dxe-ncc-2_jh.pdf

Howard

Bill N3HQB

Which Flex 6000 series transceivers have the RX-in, RX-out BNC connectors for inserting ANC-4 and other Receive peripherals? I know the 6500 and 6700 have them.

Butch

Bill, to the best of my knowledge the 6400/M and 6600/M rigs only have the Rx-In connector. Looks like FRS decided to drop the Rx-Out jack(s) on these rigs.

Butch

WX7Y

I am sure at least on my two radios, 6700 and 6600M the 6700 DOES have the BNC RX loop and the 6600M DOES NOT.

So I doubt the 6400 has them.

Butch

Bret, I also agree it was a mistake for FRS to drop the Rx Loops on the newer models. I suspect the reason why FRS added this option to the 6500 and 6700 was so owners could have the option to add external 7th Order Contest Filters (assuming they were needed). But I'm guessing FRS dropped Rx Loops in the 6600/6600M models because they didn't consider owners would want or need to add after-market Noise Reduction devices.

I'm dating myself but these after-market noise reduction boxes such as the ANC-4 and NCC-2 remind me when Speech Processor devices first came out years ago, as after-market external devices. It didn't take too long before manufacturers incorporated the Speech Processing feature as standard equipment. Perhaps we'll eventually see the same scenario play out as new SDR software revisions improve NR, NB, and Diversity Phasing adjust. Hope so.

Butch KF4HR

Erik Carling EI4KF

BG5ILX said "FLEX has a very high noise floor, and I still like traditional machines"

Is this true really? Are you sure you have optimized the receiver - preamps or lack of, AGC vs AGCT, filters, etc?

Erik EI4KF

WX7Y

Hello Erik

My 6700 and 6600M have VERY LOW noise floor in my location, what some people are calling higher noise floor is the local noise generated by there own location and their "traditional machines" just are not capable of having a way to measure it accurately.

Perhaps he is talking about the so called S meter reading, my S meter on my FLEX (Calibrated S meter) shows S4-5 compared to my Yaesu FT897 (Uncalibrated) S meter only reads S1 or 2 and changes with the Pre-AMP can't really say it is correct.

The FLEX even with a S meter at S4-5 which does NOT change with the Pre-AMP settings the actual noise floor on the pan-adapter is -115DB and this is on 80 meters and I have measured this with my IFR spectrum Analyzer and the flex is correct with both set for the same bandwidth.

Talking about AGC vs AGCT, there is absolutely NO comparison and the AGCT works very well for bringing out the desired signal out of the noise where AGC just raises and lowers the total gain of the receiver.

Not sure just what BG5ILX was referring too so it is hard to comment further.

Erik Carling EI4KF

Thank you, Bret. His comment concerned me as I intend to puchase a 6400M when that model becomes available again in Europe (outside of the UK which is no longer a viable source due to Customs Duty). I didn't think it could be correct, as I interpreted it anyway, so its good of you to respond with the facts. 73 de Erik EI4KF.

Bill N3HQB

There would be no reason to return to RX-in, RX-out hardware loop to accommodate phasing devices like the ANC-4 if that superb noise-eliminating capability could be inserted internally in the receive chain on the receive side of the internal t/r switch, and phasing accomplished inside the black box with software. There are existing hardware paths to connect a noise antenna...just saying.

By the way, I currently use two of the original ANC4's cascaded, one with an indoor noise antenna, and the other with an outdoor noise antenna. When the situation arises, I can usually null the noise, or multiple noise sources, with one or the other or both. The downside is that there is some signal attenuation, but the tradeoff can be accommodated by inserting an external broadband HF preamp (DX Engineering) in the same receive loop, or compensating with internal preamp and/or AGC-T. Although the ANC-4 has internal RF sensing t/r switching protection, which works particularly well on the carrier in AM transmission, it does not do so well in SSB transmit mode, so I have an MFJ external t/r switch in line for additional flexibility. I would gladly dispense with these workarounds in exchange for the solution contemplated in the first paragraph of this post.

KD0RC

Hi Bill, I do think the hardware loop would be valuable. I have an ANC-4 to reduce or eliminate unwanted local signals. These do not necessarily have the characteristics of noise that can be reduced with NR, NB or WNB - they look like legitimate signals to the radio. So I don't think any magic that Flex might come up with will eliminate this kind of interference.

I do like your idea of cascaded ANC-4 units. I have been doing something similar with my single unit (with mixed results...). I have the noise antenna wrapped around my in-shack noise makers (modem, router, etc) then clipleaded on to a wire stretched out across my deck. The intent is to pick up local and not so local interference. I can typically tune for one or the other. If the offending signals are separated in frequency, this works OK. If they coincide, I can only tune out one or the other.

It is too bad that Timewave does not put a low noise 6 dB preamp in their units to provide a net gain of 0 dB. I guess this could be easily added to the unit, but I have not been motivated to do so.

73,

Len, KD0RC

John KB4DU

The internal noise floor of the flex is very low, well below the external noise, which varies by location. Almost all of our hf radios have lower noise and more sensitivity than we can use due to external noise.

Bill N3HQB

Low noise is the reason I'm a Flex user.

Phase noise elimination takes low noise to nearly no noise.

With good receive antennas, I mostly leave AGC-T on zero.

Dan Trainor

Apache Labs Anan 7000/8000 DLE Radios and Software (and also SDRPlay RSP-Duo) has Diversity noise reduction built-in, such you don't need an external noise phasing unit. This is the state of art today. The software has a circular phasing window that allows you to adjust the amplitude and phasing with a mouse drag. You set-up a separate noise receiving antenna and it is phased against your main antenna. Also with the Anan, if you place it into NR2 mode, with the advanced algorithms, the local noise source is virtually eliminated. You have to actually hear this first hand to actually believe it. It is truly amazing. I heard it on a friends radio. Flex is behind in the NR category. I hope someday they will catch up. This capability is now mainstream.

G8VR

The irony is this was implemented in the 5000, but left behind when the 6000 series arrived. This has come up so many times in so many posts but never been 'rectified'. I have owned the Anan 8000 & this feature is show stopping. I wouldn't hold you breath though, as I say, this has been mentioned time and again but nothing has been done about it. I despair, I came here a few years ago, logged in and looked to see when this would be implemented, it still hasn't been done. My biggest question would be why? It's a game changer for sales - noise is the biggest challenge to ham radio today imho. Amateur's want what they want, not what others think that they want. Look at the drive for dynamic range that started with Ten-Tec listening - driven by the users...

Mike-VA3MW

I have a bunch of hams in my club that are using the QRM Eliminator to get rid of broad band urban noise. It is a simple design but effective.

You can find them just above anywhere by searching for QRM Eliminator and here is just one eBay item. https://www.ebay.com/itm/202050062714 for $21

Or https://www.ebay.com/itm/203329478716 in a nice case for $45.

I haven't tested it, but as I mentioned, they are inexpensive and do make a difference.

There are a bunch of examples on YouTube.

Will it solve all your noise issues, no. But, it might make a difference. You will have to add a 'sense' antenna someplace and the goal there is that it hears the noise but not the signal you are trying to copy.

I would love to hear if others have had success with them.

73

George M.

Try watching this Tim explains S Meters — FlexRadio Community

Its all about filter and bandwidth (zoom) settings with the Flex S meter and displayed noise floor

WX7Y

This came up a long time ago and here is some settings to try, I will just forward a couple picture they show it all just pay attention to the RX Equalizer and the depth of the DSP settings as a starting point.

I know these DSP settings look low but I have always believed the biggest problem with the default settings clear back in the PowerSDR days was the default values where to high.

WNB: 10

NB: 2

NR:8

ANF: 2

James Del Principe

Mike, isn't the WNB for this broad band noise? You wrote: " I have a bunch of hams in my club that are using the QRM Eliminator to get rid of broad band urban noise.  "

Or am I wrong about this? My WNB does nothing except if I turn it up very high it creates interference of its own.

Thanks for all your help and advice to us, BTW. Jim

John KB4DU

I talked to Steve Hicks about the WBN. Flex developed it to deal with power transformer noise at the Austin site. It works pretty well on that type of noise, but not effective on other types. Pretty high noise where I live, next to an army post, to the WBN was one of the reasons I bought the flex, but it doesn’t help at all. Steve says it’s not the right type of noise.