Good lesson Jeff - thanks for sharing. It's amazing just how much noise power supplies / step-down AC-DC converters can generate. One of the more insidious offenders (and one which is growing in ubiquity) is the 120 VAC Edison screw base LED light bulb. Many of these are made in China, or otherwise cheaply, and are among the worst offenders at screaming RF noise. A single one can pollute an entire neighborhood, or so I've read. Again, it's the cheaply made AC-DC converters in these things that generate the noise. It's why, at least for now, I'm sticking with CFLs as a less-offensive alternative (never thought I'd be saying that!).
We as HAMs should unite and get the word out on these things, maybe the FCC will actually pay attention and do something about them - though I ain't holding my breath. 73, KF5YHP Sent from my iPhone > On Jul 19, 2015, at 1:15 PM, Jeffrey Carson via BVARC <[email protected]> wrote: > > I recently relocated my shack to a 3rd bedroom and decided to build a new > computer as I had a lot of the components laying around. One of the > components was a 750w power supply that I got for next to nothing on a black > friday deal at fry's. > > Long story short, the power supply was causing a LOT of noise on 20 meters > while using my Softrock Ensemble 2. I bought a higher end modular power > supply and the interference went to nothing on the spectrum/waterfall! > > I wish i'd taken a screen shot of the waterfall before I swapped the power > supply to show how big of a difference there was. Lesson here is don't go too > cheap on the power supply if you're going to be using an SDR. > > 73 > > KF5ONT > Jeff > _______________________________________________ > BVARC mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org
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