bcd325p2 computer interference on railroad

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Folded dipole is what it is by virtue of the design having the ends of the dipoles shorted together. Picture a full wave loop of wire in a circle, then pulled flat .

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Please excuse my spelling. Terrible keyboard on this device.

 

[briskattivo]

I assume these pictures are rotated 90 degrees, and the antenna is next to a windowsill? If so that is how it should be fir vertical polarity.

Oh my gosh, how did they show up that way? I do not like it when viewing software automatically "rotates" it for you, in other words: looks right but the file isn't. Anyway, yes, that is what's going on here. Rotate clockwise 90 degrees (in your mind) for clarity.

Folded dipole is what it is by virtue of the design having the ends of the dipoles shorted together. Picture a full wave loop of wire in a circle, then pulled flat .

Oh! That just "connected" for me. Yes, that makes perfect sense. I guess it is a folded dipole. I guess I didn't realize that the wires are actually connected at the end, therefore: folded dipole!

Really though it works great RFI-EMI-GUY. Kudos to you for finding a $1.50 dipole and transformer. It is superior for aviation, which is quite nice. Many other systems that I scan sound very good as well. I can tell I'm just getting started though.

Please excuse my spelling. Terrible keyboard on this device.

Don't worry about it! My sideways photos and your terrible keyboard cancel out each other. LOL

 

[briskattivo]

Here's a re-attempt at posting my photos.

 

[briskattivo]

I finally did what was suggested and cut and soldered the dipole. I ruined one in the process... or it was already ruined, not sure. Anyway, it is working great. I can hear all the dispatchers a lot better. I'm still too low to really hear the trains themselves well, but I can kind of hear them sometimes. I overhead something on a random frequency of two guys talking and the conversation got a bit questionable before they stopped. No idea what that was about. But it really does work. I have to admit it was pretty fun learning how to solder, hard as hell on the hair thin dipole twin lead but I made it work.

My mother was in town this week and I listened to the scanner in her hotel room a bit and was shocked at all the rail transmissions I could hear. I wasn't even using the dipole, just my trusty diamon RH77CA. It was very cool. But I think if I ever want to hear that much in my own place I'm going to need to live somewhere higher up. Will have to see how that ties into my future plans. TMI. Anyway, thanks, perhaps I will update this again.

 

[briskattivo]

5 Seconds later... Okay, something weird but fantastic happened. I decided to move the dipole to the top of the wall touching the ceiling and way above my scanner. Initially tried to run the RG-6 coaxial cable down the middle of these two pictures above my desk and it didn't work at all, however, after I adjusted the coaxial a bit so that it was a little more taut and now I can hear everything! I can hear dispatchers, trains, signals, everything. New signal every 5 seconds. Also, used the conventional railroad system downloaded from Radioreference for my scanner and that seemed to help a lot. It is midnight here, I cannot wait until tomorrow when there is even more traffic! Now I'm really set! And oh yeah excellent aviation reception as well. Perfect!

 

[briskattivo]

Just an update, I ended up dropping $80 on a BC533N, because I started to realize that the manual squelch that's on the 533N far exceeds the BC325P2's capabilities for railroad applications, and I was right

The dipole is still set up, I swapped a broken rg6 cable, that I accidentally mangled when I weaved it through a ferrite core, for a quad shielded rg6 coax with f connectors, but that didn't work either, so I ordered an rg6 75ohm cable with bnc connectors and now it works great

with the dipole, I also noticed that the fork connectors on the balun and dipole are pretty important for a reason I do not know, tried other ways but they didn't work

I also now scan all the AAR 7-97 channels except for data channels on the 533N

Pretty much perfect now, thanks to the internet for solving problems

 

[briskattivo]

Whoops, that was BC355N, "355," not BC553N, sorry about that