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radio interference opinion

KD2GOE

W9WDX Amateur Radio Club Member
May 30, 2013
950
219
173
43
Buffalo
4 days ago i started getting some radio interference it is 24/7 night at day 8 sunits. I get it I my car out side my house if i drive up and down the street, and I think it is coming from the power line transformers?? or a street light..? I just want your opinion before I go gung ho making phones calls...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qXqXsexlk
 
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I have pretty much the same issue. I have the antenna grounded properly. I am somewhat close to power lines.

I'm currently using rg8x coax but once winter clears away im putting on the rg8u instead.

I get about 3 s units of static. During the day it's there but not noticeable due to the amount of skip on the radio. Night time it's very prevailant when the skip goes away. Which makes it hard to communicate with other's only a few miles away.
 
I have pretty much the same issue. I have the antenna grounded properly. I am somewhat close to power lines.

I'm currently using rg8x coax but once winter clears away im putting on the rg8u instead.

I get about 3 s units of static. During the day it's there but not noticeable due to the amount of skip on the radio. Night time it's very prevailant when the skip goes away. Which makes it hard to communicate with other's only a few miles away.

I have my antenna grounded with 10 awg wire on 2 5' stainless rods and I have my lowpass filter grounded to copper water pipe
 
Wideband noise like that is generally powerline related. All the grounding and filters in the world will not solve the issue when the noise is coming in directly from the antenna. The source of the noise needs to be cured. Take a small AM radio, an HT that covers air band freqs in AM mode is great, and travel around the neighborhood looking for where the noise is the loudest and then call the power company.
 
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The static is always going to increase at night. That's just a fact of AM and SSB at night.

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk 2


Really?? Must be a local phenomenon applicable to your area only. Never noticed that happen in my 36 years of operating SSB or AM including a couple more years of being an AM shortwave listener. I get more static in summer due to thunderstorms but that is just mainly in static crashes and not continuous static.
 
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Yeah the background static is always noticeably louder at night for me. It's not antenna system or radio related, I've noticed it on all of my different rigs and antennas... Even if I drive away from the powerlines, it's always there. SSB can be very quiet during the day in terms of background static, but at night it's always prevalent, worse on AM. Once the skip dies out the static takes over the receive.
 
my guess is a bad power line transformer. track it down like CK said and call the power company. they will come out and fix it. (when they can get to it)

i wanted to make a quick point on grounding since it was mentioned.
you need to be careful about how and where you are grounding your equipment.
you can make things worse, and even dangerous by creating new paths to ground right through your equipment.

i know this sounds counterintuitive, but its better to not mess with grounding unless you're going to do it right.
sticking a ground rod in the ground with a wire running up to the base of your antenna may help cut down on some static, but its not gonna do squat if your antenna takes a hit, or if lightning strikes near it.
if that happens, that electricity will be looking for any and all paths to ground.
it will use ALL available paths in order to get there.
if you have a piece of equipment that you think is "grounded" but its not at the same ground potential as another ground, like say that ground rod that is connected to the antenna; then your radio becomes the connection between them. you dont want that!

ALL your grounds, including the AC mains ground, need to be tied together.
there's more to it than that, but i just wanted to get people thinking about safety.

hijack over.
LC
 
my guess is a bad power line transformer. track it down like CK said and call the power company. they will come out and fix it. (when they can get to it)

i wanted to make a quick point on grounding since it was mentioned.
you need to be careful about how and where you are grounding your equipment.
you can make things worse, and even dangerous by creating new paths to ground right through your equipment.

i know this sounds counterintuitive, but its better to not mess with grounding unless you're going to do it right.
sticking a ground rod in the ground with a wire running up to the base of your antenna may help cut down on some static, but its not gonna do squat if your antenna takes a hit, or if lightning strikes near it.
if that happens, that electricity will be looking for any and all paths to ground.
it will use ALL available paths in order to get there.
if you have a piece of equipment that you think is "grounded" but its not at the same ground potential as another ground, like say that ground rod that is connected to the antenna; then your radio becomes the connection between them. you dont want that!

ALL your grounds, including the AC mains ground, need to be tied together.
there's more to it than that, but i just wanted to get people thinking about safety.

hijack over.
LC

ok so what your saying is to not only put the rod in the ground but all so tap off that rod to the water pipes in my house witch have the same grounding potential?

I have 3 grounds now..
one on the antenna to 2 grounding 5' rods
one on the low pass filter to water pipe.
one on the radios AC ground that is all so to my water pipes

then run one more from my rods to the copper water pipes? right now the shealed of the Coax from the antenna to the low pass is the link to the rods to the water pipes... and I take it that is no good...?

ihave a butt load of 10 awg wire I can run tomorrow
 
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yes, all your grounds need to be tied together. use only solid wire to connect them.

i will lay out the ideal way, and you can figure out how to make your station "in compliance".

ideally, you would have ground rods at the base of your antenna mast, a ground rod right outside of your radio room, and a ground rod installed at the AC mains breaker box.
then you would tie all these rods together.

then you connect all the chassis of your equipment to a common buss bar in the shack, and run a wire out to the ground rod outside the radio room.
the total length of the run from chassis to ground rod should be less than 8 ft for CB frequencies. (yes, i know this is not usually practical, but like i said, this is the ideal)

there is a lot to it, and you should not take my post as the end all be all of ground installation.
do some searching on the ham sites and you'll come across many articles about grounding.
use these as a guide in order to make your installation safe.
LC
 
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the 2 transformers on my street look like there 50 years old



why solid wire? and is 10 awg adequate?


I know this may not fix my radio interference but while we are one the subject of grounding, Just want to make sure I have my bases covered ..


I also found this link if any one has the same trouble I am having in the future

http://www.arrl.org/power-line-noise
 
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I am working on getting a hand held CB radio to test with. This is getting ridiculous, even my short wave radio is dead with all this crap... :angry:

I am going to call the power company Monday....
 

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