[AMRadio] Desperate for a RFI solution.

[Randy Berry]

Hi,
I recently bought a Yaesu FT-857D and I have tried everything to mute
the noise in the receiver. I get an s8-s9 noise floor on every band
but VHF/UHF. I've tried everything I can think of to kill the noise.
This is not the first radio plagued by the noise. This has been an
ongoing battle ever since I moved into this building.

Here's my situation. I am an apartment dweller living on the third
floor with indoor antennas. I am not allowed to have any outdoor
antennas on my balcony. (I've already been warned once with my stealth
shortened dipole.) So I am using 2 MFJ-1699T 10 band antennas and a
dipole kit in my living room. I also use a MFJ-939 autotuner which
works great, it will tune lawn furniture! It even does 6 meters which
it's not supposed to.

Anyway, I get a constant noise floor as high as s9 on all HF bands. I
added a common mode choke inline and that dropped it some. (It was
even as high as +20db before the choke.) I can't even hear anything on
CB channel 19! I tried to hear the local 10 meter slop bucket net and
could hear faint voices but not make any intelligence out of them due
to the high noise floor. 144/440 is fine. I get little noise at all, 6
meters is a little noisy, but usable.

I bought this rig because my standalone receiver died and I needed
something to listen to and since I can't use my K7DYY Super Sr.
transmitter anyway, I decided to buy a transceiver so I can talk too.
It does AM at 25 watts carrier, and one of the first things I did was
program in all the common AM frequencies on all the bands! Over the
years I have spent tons of dollars and countless hours trying to
resolve this and nothing works.

I think it's the CFL's in the hallway. There is one every 10 feet or
so for the entire length of the building, on both sides of the
hallway. They are the only thing I can think of that runs 24/7/365. Is
there any way possible to clean up their noise so I can use HF
peacefully?

I don't have any CFL's in my apartment. I'm still using Edison
technology, all my wall warts and switching supplies are clean, so
it's not coming from my apartment. I've even turned off the AC main in
my breaker box and tried on battery from inside my apartment. No
change.

I'm open to all suggestions apart from vandalizing the property by
breaking all the bulbs. (Believe me I've thought of that already!)
Anything I can make or buy to filter CFL noise?

tnx es 73 de Randy, N3LRX