[Elecraft] LED bulbs

[Jim Brown]

On Tue,5/12/2015 6:18 AM, Marc Veeneman wrote:
> owever, the only ones I can't live with are the undercounter LED strips powered by WAC 24 volt power packs.  Not only are those things, the power packs, unusually expensive, I am surprised that the FCC allows their sale in the U.S.  They obliterate the 160 and 80 meter bands on my KX3 and K3.

You should not be surprised about the FCC's inaction -- their 
enforcement division was gutted in the name of small government, and 
what was left of it is going away in the name of a balanced budget.

You've correctly  zeroed in on the noisy component -- it's the PSU. You 
should return them and the lights that use them as defective and demand 
your money back. If you can't or don't want to do that, throw those 
noisy PSUs in the trash and replace them with a linear supply.

Check out the LED lighting from this vendor. I'm using their strips to 
light my hamshack, running five strips in series to light my ham shack. 
The combination draws 1.2A from my 12V system. Their strip lights have 
built-in rectifiers ahd regulators that allow them to run from any AC or 
DC source between 10 and 24 V. They have been exhibiting at Pacificon 
and the Visalia DX Convention for several years.

https://www.wiredco.com/LED_Flashing_Lighting_s/1847.htm

There are several good ways to power these lights. I've trashed all the 
new switching power supplies that come with new electronics and replaced 
them with old linear wall warts that came with much older stuff. And I 
buy more of them at hamfests and second hand stores, typically for a 
buck apiece. Another trick is to use a smaller linear supply to trickle 
charge a battery of the voltage that the equipment needs. I'm doing that 
for stuff around my living room entertainment system, and for the cable 
modem and WiFi router. In addition to killing the noise, it functions as 
an inexpensive UPS.

73, Jim K9YC