[Elecraft] Noise, RFI ?

[Fred Jensen]

I can't tell you what it is, but I can describe a few things for you:

Neighbor has a plasma TV.  The noise is very broad and at low P3 spans 
looks just solid as you describe.  With a 200 KHz span, you can clearly 
see the changing video, it's very apparent.  Plasma TV's radiate off the 
screen, his is about 300 feet from my tower, and is very strong but 
nowhere near 30 over S9.  So, if at very wide spans on the P3 it is 
still constant, it is likely *not* a plasma TV.

Since it seems to be constant from the BC band to 10m, and is very 
strong, either the source is very close or the total source energy must 
be high ... very high.  If it's not close, it suggests something 
industrial or associated with a big power line.  I had one instance of 
very broad, very strong noise similar to your description.  Same 
neighbor has a military-grade night vision set-up and we located the 
source on a power line.  Fortunately for me, our power company has been 
fined big bucks for starting fires, it was on a 112KV line and involved 
a tree, so they didn't play around, they just fixed it.

My current noise source is a sodium vapor lamp lighting the interstate 
off ramp about a mile from here.  The lamp is dying, it goes through the 
start sequence, appears to be firing up and then dies.  It will repeat 
in a couple of minutes.  The street lamp belongs to CalTrans, I can't 
get them to fix it.  Then again, I really have no illusions about 
getting the State of California to fix anything.

Unfortunately, tracking down noise with a portable radio [I use my KX1] 
requires that the noise be present for significant periods.  Good luck, 
if you find it, I'd like to know the source.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2014 Cal QSO Party 4-5 Oct 2014
- www.cqp.org

On 2/19/2014 2:05 PM, Phil Hystad wrote:
> It is hard to describe this noise because it lacks any features at
> all.  Think of atmospherics, like background noise that usually sits
> around S0 to S1 on the S-meter, more on 80 meters in the evening.
> That sort of thing.
>
> Now, make that noise a solid (no changes, no peaks, no features,
> absolutely flat across the spectrum) 30/9 at least.  The waterfall
> display is virtually opaque with this noise.  The frequency spectrum
> display is just a band of noise across the whole top part of the P3
> display -- just a little space on top where the labels are written.