Saturday, March 6, 2010

Hello Radio.......

WELL.....I was having great fun in the ARRL International DX Contest this weekend running my Kenwood TS-950SDX, and then the YF turned on the TV. A few minutes later she came in saying I was coming in over the surround-sound speakers. Since I had just changed bands from 15 Meters (21 MHz) to 20 Meters (14 MHz), I thought maybe something was more sensitive to the different frequency in use. I went back on 15, and had her go listen while I sent a "test" transmission.
No dice!
I come in *equally* well on both bands, and don't bother the video one bit. Since the home theater setup is fed from a Verizon FiOS cable box with HDMI for the video (I disabled the HDMI audio pass-through in the Onkyo receiver), and a TOSLink optical cable for the audio, I've now got to figure out where the RF is leaking in to the system.
My computer speakers in the shack don't pick anything up, her computer speakers don't pick anything, and her son's computer speakers and stereo don't pick anything up. And I've asked the neighbors on both sides if I ever bother their TV's, and they've said no.
The Onkyo receiver is the likely culprit at this time, as the AC line cord is only two conductors, so the receiver really isn't grounded. Luckily it has a *real* ground connection on the back panel, so I'll try tying that to one of the other pieces of gear in the home theater setup that has a ground connection.
In the meantime, I'm going to fire up my FlexRadio Systems 5000A, and see if the problem goes away. The Kenwood runs a solid 150 Watts output, and the Flex is set for 100 Watts max.
Sometimes you just have to back off the power a wee bit, and the RFI will go away.

2 comments:

  1. Oh joy... unwanted RF... That's gonna be fun to track down! Good luck with that and I 'hope' it's just a grounding issue...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, it can be a real pain!
    Running the Flex at 100 Watts still got into the living room sound system, but didn't bother anything else. I'll try the ground strap later today after the contest is over.

    ReplyDelete

Keep it civil, please....

Annnnd.....We Got Zip.....

 Total snow was about 6~8", but half o0f it melted as soon as it hit, and we never had more than 3" on the ground at any one time....