Unknown Birdies. No Antenna.

Dennis Wage

Mike-VA3MW

My guess is those birdies are from the Laptop. That Laptop has different EMI levels than your radio.

I did see one near 4.240, but it looks like a switching power supply and I am not running on a battery. I didn't see any others on my FLEX-6600 on the frequencies you measured.

Birdies occur in all HF radios. Grab another HF radio and slowly dial through the HF spectrum.

SmartSDR makes it easy to find them because you can zoom out to an 8Mhz bandwidth and they become visible. Thankfully, they are very weak and do not impact communications at all.

When FlexRadio designs and builds a radio, one of the last steps before mass manufacturing is that the radio has to go to an EMI lab for RF emission testing. Part of FCC Part 15 and EN 55032 in the EU.

Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) testing is a process to evaluate a device's ability to emit and tolerate electromagnetic interference without causing or experiencing performance issues. It is crucial for ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and maintaining the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of electronic devices

These tests are not inexpensive (thousands of dollars). Before the radio can be put into production, any EMI issues must be resolved and then the radio retested (more thousands of dollars).

On one product, we thought we were good to go, but failed an EU test that required significant re-work to resolve.

Not only do we have to do that in the US, but we have to have the same test done in a EU certified Lab. Again, more money.

Mike-VA3MW

Can you show the frequency bar at the bottom and the strength on the right side. The radio is a very very sensitive receiver and I bet those are below -120dbm. You have likely had them on every HF radio, but without the panadapter, you didn't notice them.

My guess is that is noise from your LAN or Network Switch that is coming in as common mode and along wires such as the power cable, speaker cable or any other cable. They are not internal to the radio.

Are they about 40khz apart?

Dennis Wage

I tried battery on 6400 with my laptop. With Ethernet connected directly between the 2 would connect for 5 seconds then disconnect.. I had the whole shack powered down, and that way your theory could have been tested.

Does .20 change that issue on the 6000's at all?

Mike-VA3MW

You should be able to do a direct 'link.local' connect as you describe and stay connected. We do it have hamfests all the time. It should not timeout and disconnect.

In the Lab this is one of the ways we test radios. If it failed we would know long before we shipped the software out to the public.

Dennis Wage

I do it often too.. I did have the flex running on a small 12v battery, but the voltage was 12.78 and the Flex booted up and ran nicely. The laptop would connect to smartsdr then disconnect saying there is no radio to connect to. Then 10 seconds later it would connect again and repeat. I gave up on that for now.
But I agree it's probably LAN related.

Dennis Wage

These 'birdies' occur at
1.060, 2.120, 4.240, 6.360, 8.480, 10.600, 12.720, 14.840, 19.080

Trucker

Dennis, it looks like none of the birdies are inside any of the ham bands. I just checked my 6600M by disconnecting my antenna from the back of the radio. No birdies show at any of the frequencies you are showing. Everything is flat at the internal noise floor of the radio. I would suspect something in the radio or attached to the radio is causing this. Do you have a GPSDO or a external 10Mhz reference hooked up to the radio? If so, maybe you could disconnect it and see if the birdies go away.

James

WD5GWY

WX7Y

Dennis, I also checked here and I ONLY see my 10MHz External GPS clock source at 10MHz but nothing else across all the bands and at the frequencies you mentioned. If you have a Battery maybe run the Radio just on the Battery and disconnect the Power supply and ANY wall warts and better yet turn the main breaker off and see if you still see the Birdies.

just a thought

73

Bret / WX7Y

Trucker

Dennis, have you been able to find the source of the birdies you have been having?

James

WD5GWY

Dennis Wage

No, I filed a ticket. Ken should be getting my email soon.

This is my flex on a battery, with my laptop also on batter.
Main house breaker off. My house is dead.

Dennis Wage

Ken says these birdies are completely normal. But I'll tell you this right now. The day I am trying to get a dx and one of those birdies are on that frequency, they won't be normal anymore.

Geoff AB6BT

As Trucker pointed out, none of the birdie frequencies (1.060, 2.120, 4.240, 6.360, 8.480, 10.600, 12.720, 14.840, 19.080) are inside ham bands.

They won't interfere with DX in any ham band.

Just sayin…

Trucker

Dennis, is the laptop you are using the only computer you have available? In other words, have you tested with another computer? If you only have one computer ( the laptop) it is possible that the laptop is developing a problem that hasn't shown up before now.

I hope you get this figured out.

James

WD5GWY

Trucker

I have done some more testing and have found a few weak birdies outside the ham bands. But, nothing in any of the bands. One thing that I have started picking up ( with antenna attached) is RFI from Christmas lights. I was on 20 meters earlier and plenty of signals to listen to. Just as the sun went down and it got dark, I started seeing birdies in the middle of 20 meters. I switched to 40 meters and they were gone.

So,it looks like it's going to be fun as more of my neighbors get their lights up and running.

James

WD5GWY