UPDATE: I believe my problems are happening on the front end of my transceiver. I have LED headlight bulbs and just installed LED fog lights in my truck. So the LED headlight bulbs always caused RF interference when I turned on my FM radio. The weird thing is I could have sworn I had these same problems even during the day with the headlights off. Well my local repeater is coming in fine other than the occasional blast of static. Tonight I reached out to a repeater about 60 miles away and although they heard me perfectly fine, I had a very hard time hearing hem. Lots of static. It is NOT an alternator whine and the interference does NOT change with the RPMs of the engine/vehicle speed.
CLIFF'S NOTES:
-Kenwood TM-281A mobile transceiver
-Laird QWB144 1/4 wave NMO antenna
-Laird GBR8PI magnetic mount NMO base mounted on the center of the trucks roof
-When I turn on the headlight I hear a little bit of static
-When I turn on my LED fog lights it gets a little bit louder
-The problem seems to be much worse when Im driving. When Im parked I can hear that repeater fine, even with my headlights and fog lights turned on(Again, both are LED)
-My radio is wired up to a 12 bus fuse block that is connected to the battery using 0 AWG wire
-I TX perfectly all the time, under all conditions.
Here are my solutions:
- Buy better LED headlight bulbs
-Add a choke to the power/ground wires going into my transceiver
Any specific type of choke I should look for? I am totally ignorant to chokes and how they work. Thank you all for your help!