[ARC5] RFI noise sources

[sbjohnston at aol.com]

 The latest source of noise I've encountered are solar power systems.  My neighborhood on Kauai is full of them - I see the panels on the roof of nearly every house.  I suspect the associated electronics is making the noise (not the panels themselves) but the system often has a lot of unshielded (plastic conduit) wiring to radiate the noise produced by the switch mode inverters/converters/etc.  

Not all solar power systems are troublesome, but many are very radio-noisy.  Combine that with all the other noisy electronics present in this neighborhood (multiple electric car chargers for one known example) and the result in my neighborhood is a high noise level (S9 on most bands) and the noise is coming from multiple compass headings.

I was able to position a noise pick-up antenna near my low 40m dipole and achieve a great reduction in the noise using an MFJ noise canceller.  I am not able to hear much DX, but it is great for NVIS.  So I think it is cancelling signals from low angles (the houses around me) and not suppressing the high angle signals from above.  Fortunately NVIS is what is needed for the regional Hawaii nets on 40m SSB so I can at least participate in those.

This setup also works to some degree on 30 meters.  On the other bands my canceller and noise-antenna are not helpful.

For general HF DX operations I have to go portable in a park.


Steve WD8DAS  

sbjohnston at aol.com  
http://www.wd8das.net/  
http://af4k-crystals.com/  
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