[Boatanchors] Grounds, thanks all

[Brian Clarke]

So, it's NOT QRN, Phil. It's QRM!

Putting in the Earth connections merely lowers the impedance and hence the 
signal levels of the incoming signals AND the noise at your antenna, and 
effectively increases the length of your antenna, making is a tiny bit 
closer to resonant. Have you tried a SINAD test on your reception? What 
happens if you reverse the two antenna leads to your receiver?

Go fix the QRM.

73 de Brian, VK2GCE.

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 6:09 PM, Phil said:


> Hi Brian,
> Don't mean to be argumentative here, but is it a "mind set" if I 
> DISCONNECT the leads going from the under-table ground bus bar to the 
> ground system, and with the receivers tuned to "no signal", the noise 
> level displayed on the "S" meter goes from (now) close to zero to over S9 
> on the lower bands, less on the higher frequencies (and the power lines 
> are buried under ground)?
>
> Is it a mindset that when I added three additional rods, the noise level 
> fell significantly below what it was before they were added?
>
> The main reason I'm doing this work is to try to quiet the rfi down as 
> much as possible.  I do a lot of weak signal LF work here (have done so 
> for over 12 years now), and believe me, the grounding that I've done has 
> made a huge difference in the received noise levels.  As I don't transmit 
> a lot on HF (check into an occasional 40 or 75M net) I don't really care 
> so much what it does for that, but I do care about what I hear in the 
> headset.
>
> I can walk around with a portable radio and coming within a few feet of 
> mine or the other mobile homes in the park the noise level rises 
> dramatically, radiated from the wiring in the walls (and no, the noise 
> isn't generated from equipment in my home, I've checked that).  If I take 
> the portable up on the metal roof the noise level also drops as the radio 
> is raised higher.  This whole park is just one huge electrical noise field 
> (280+ homes in just a small area, all tied together with the same 
> electrical supplies). . .
>
> As I mentioned in a later post, the aluminum wire is a moot point anyway, 
> I had to get copper.
>
> 73 de Phil,  KO6BB
> http://ko6bb1.multiply.com/ (OTR Blog)
> http://www.qsl.net/ko6bb/  (Web Page)