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Spurious RF Spikes on Every Band

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  • Member ✭✭
    edited April 2019
    Great point Ken.  Never thought of it that way.
    de Roger W6VZV
  • Member ✭✭✭
    edited April 2019
    Randy, no books or references.  Just some hook-up wire soldered to a BNC connector (or even to bare coax).  Say 10 turns 1 inch diameter.  You will find it has enough directivity and pickup for sniffing out local noise.
    The first step is normally to determine if in-house or not by battery power and switching off the whole house, or keeping the shack AC powered up.  Don't rule out things like appliances which have variable speed motors.
  • Member ✭✭✭
    edited April 2019
    Randy, make sure you do what Randy suggests. Run the Flex off a 12 Volt battery for the test. I had a similar problem a few years ago which was caused by a faulty unused laptop switching power supply that was still plugged in, out of sight, on a shelf up under my operating desk.

    I would never have found it if I had not not turned off all AC power to the Shack. The important thing is to know one way or the other if the source of the noise is coming from your house or not.

    Good luck. Winston
  • Member
    edited April 2019
    Thanks Gentlemen!

    I ran the unit off a 12V battery in my yard, outside the house, and with all the breakers in the house switched off.  I see exactly the same interference, at exactly the same frequencies.  

    So It's definitely coming from somewhere outside of my house...

    I have an RTL-SDR which is capable of receiving on the HF bands.  I guess I just need to hook it up to a small directional antenna sensitive at HF frequencies and start sleuthing? 

    Randy



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