[Elecraft] Birdies

[Randy Johnson]

I have had trouble with annoying “birdies,” notably at 14014 and 14029.  I 
hope my experience in chasing these down helps someone else with a similar 
problem.



I finally traced this to an interaction between the cable modem for my high 
speed cable Internet access and the network card on my computer.  When I cut 
power to the modem, the birdie would stop.  When I unplugged the CAT 5 cable 
at the computer, the birdie stopped.  When plugged in and when I cut power 
to the computer, it was still there because when a computer is “off,” not 
all circuits are off, and whatever the reason the birdies were still there. 
I tried switching to DSL as provided by the local phone company but the 
problem was still there.



It may well be that there are more expensive network cards that would not 
have this interaction but I did not want to fool around with them. I had 
noted that I did not have birdies while using a laptop in the shack.  So I 
tried a cheap wireless card, similar in function to the ones used with 
laptops except that you plug it in to one of the slots on your PC.  The 
birdies went away but the thing was incredibly slow, worse than a 56K modem. 
So I bought a more expensive Linksys wireless card with a “speed 
accelerator.”  No more birdies and the Internet speed is consistent with 
high speed access. I should point out that the literature provided with this 
card says that the accelerator works only with machines running Windows XP.



Randy W6SJ.