[1000mp] FTV-1000 problems.

[Thomas Beltran]

Mark said:
> As for sensitivity, there has been an on again off again discussion on
> this for quite some time. Apparently some units tend to be deaf'er than
> others. I can tell you that there is a ham closeby to me that is a "big
> gun" on 6 and I hear what he hears. Now with a large antenna array and
> he's higher than me, he hears better, but with my 5 el CCraft at 30 ft,
> I still work the world and also enjoy "the magic band conditions" when
> they present themselves. Keep in mind that 6m can be frustrating too.
> There are times when I hear stuff that my friends don't and vise versa.
> Location location location.......

Well here I go for round two - sorry to those who do not have the FTV-1000,
or perhaps have no interest in 6 meters.

I've played around with the radio, and compared notes with other local
hams - we were all on 50.125.  On Sunday afternoon, there was a South Dakota
station on - I could just barely hear him above the noise - everyone else
heard him.  What I realized, was that my noise level is S-9 - I hadn't
really thought about it before.  Everyone else heard him at S-8 - S-9 (of
course there is no absolute figure for an S unit).  But everyone reported
low noise on the order of S-1 or S-2.

So....it appears that the sensitivity might be okay, but the high noise
keeps signals at or below the noise level.  I did the usual stuff - turned
off the power to everything in the house except that room and turned off
everything in the room except the radio - still no significant change
(turning off the computer off did lower the noise by 1/2 S unit).  I rode
around the neigborhood with a AM receiver - nothing unusual.  I used my
Kenwood handheld tuned to 920 (in between radio stations)  The static was
constant - about 2 S units.  But I went near a transformer box and there was
a slight plusing - but it is several hundred feet from my house, and the
plusing was very low.  In short, I just did not find anything that would
explain the high noise.

When I got home, I went into the Mark V menu and on 9-1, turned down the IF
gain, from "12" to "9".  On six meters, there seems to be more gain - this
lowered the S meter noise reading substantially, down to S-5 to 7, and
listening to a beacon - did not seem to hurt the sensitivity.  However, the
sound of the noise did not seem to change much - it certainly did not sound
2 to 5 S units less.

My question is whether anyone had had a problem which caused excessive
noise?  This is a "white noise" - no static sound or noise like car ignition
or electric motor brushes just a hiss.  In fact, what is quite odd, is that
when I turned the IF gain down to about 3, the noise I heard in the speaker
sounded about the same - but the S-meter went from S-9 to between 0 and S-1.
I understand about the Inrad front-end mod, but as I understand it, it
improves the noise on the order of a few db - the noise here is way out of
the range of just a few db.  One last thought, the only thing I did to
actually lower the noise that I heard, was to turn off my computer - could a
processor inside the Mark V be causing the noise?  Anyone with any
experiences?  Tom W6EIJ