My neighbors probably thought I was crazy. Many times I'd be out on the balcony at 2am chasing down distant signals. Glad to hear it worked well for you. I can say from experience that the Wellbrook gets quieter as you get it further from sources of RFI. Within ten feet of the house is typically very noisy. The noise drops off significantly beyond that.
End Of An Era At This Listening Post
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ridgescan
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Hey Martin good to see ya
ridgescan
Member
Good info! My gal and I are going to take a ride this week to HRO which is about 15 miles from me to get me some new feed lines and I also want to take a look at an MFJ 1040C active antenna (indoor) so I can run the R75 or SX88 up in the bedroom. I hope they still carry those
I think you mean the MFJ-1020C. I have never tried it and I hope it works for you, but an active vertical indoors...well the minimum HRO restock fee is 15%. Still, I get it with the small size versus a loop in the bedroom. What I like about my house is the ability to drill holes in the walls. I have that luxury while others do not. Perhaps a clean install with panels on the wall making it look normal might afford you a coaxial cable to the outdoors.
The problem with virtually all indoor antennas is that by being indoors they're surrounded by massive RFI generators. In some cases, like if you live in a wood frame stucco house, they may also be in a bit of a Faraday cage with all that wire mesh the stucco is hanging on. Sometimes you can hunt down the biggest noise generators and eliminate them. My parents had a digital-to-analog TV converter on a little used portable that put out an absolutely horrendous amount of noise. Thankfully just turning it off solved the problem. I once lived in a house that was virtually RFI-free during the day but put out an intolerable amount of noise at night. That turned out to be a security light that was set to come on at 25% at dusk. The dimmer circuit was the killer. I changed it to only come on when it detected motion and the problem was eliminated. But even without major RFI polluters like that, just the collection of electrical devices in the house put out a low level interference that can raise the noise floor significantly.Good info! My gal and I are going to take a ride this week to HRO which is about 15 miles from me to get me some new feed lines and I also want to take a look at an MFJ 1040C active antenna (indoor) so I can run the R75 or SX88 up in the bedroom. I hope they still carry those
Tune a MW radio to an unoccupied frequency and listen to the background hiss. Then go to the electrical panel and turn off all the breakers. You'll be amazed at the difference in background noise. You'll probably wonder if the radio is even turned on. Or maybe the "unoccupied" frequency is now playing a station that used to be below the background noise. Amplified indoor antennas tend to magnify all that noise. Ones with vertical antenna elements are going to be even more problematic in that regard.
I'd do whatever you can to get an antenna outside and away from the house. The further the better, but even a couple meters can make a big difference.
Turbo68
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Ridge you know deep down you cannot go without it isaid that to myself so many times but still enjoy nit after 45 years only think i really hate is all my wires in the back of my 2 desks reason for that is i am into home theatre and there is a lot of wires behind my system glad youre back.
Regards Lino.
Regards Lino.
KB2GOM
Active Member
I am ignorant about the DSP capabilities of the 8600, but I had good luck with one of these for reducing noise:
Of course, if you have killer DSP on the 8600, you can safely ignore this message!
Jock reviews the BHI Compact In-Line Noise Eliminating Module
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Jock Elliott, who shares the following guest post: The noise, the neighbor, and the box By Jock Elliott, KB2GOM Imagine the annual meeting of an internationa…
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Of course, if you have killer DSP on the 8600, you can safely ignore this message!
Want to bet? Mine does. We can hang flags from the front porch, but no on the flagpoles.
ridgescan
Member
I will already have the outdoor loop set up for the rig in the garage, I was just thinking about this thing for use in an upstairs bedroom with the other rigs that won't share in the outdoor loop thing. I tried SW with my little Tecsun PL380 up in said room and reception was pretty decent and very quiet! I'm up in elevation a little bit here at this new home and all the utilities are buried so this helps
ridgescan
Member
Thanks! Good info here.
ridgescan
Member
Thanks Lino-good to see you!
It's really nice that she is supportive of your hobby. A lot of significant others aren't, or aren't enough. Does she have any interest in any aspect of it? Just curious. I.e., when you hear a cool signal from Madagascar or wherever, does she at least find that curious? I had a GF long ago who at least found some of it interesting, even if she never wanted to DX at all.Good info! My gal and I are going to take a ride this week to HRO which is about 15 miles from me to get me some new feed lines and I also want to take a look at an MFJ 1040C active antenna (indoor) so I can run the R75 or SX88 up in the bedroom. I hope they still carry those
ridgescan
Member
Not really, but she does seem to appreciate the magnitude of my interest in such things as catching a SW signal from the other side of Earth and you're right, I'm grateful for her
but far as her interest personally, she's not. I am the only one in the whole family who ever gives a crap about this thing and I am sure it goes that way for most of us here.
ridgescan
Member
So I bought that MFJ1020c active SW indoor antenna and 100' of Times LMR240 hard line for the Wellbrook. I will likely have that loop up and running permanently by the end of the week.
Far as that MFJ box, you guys know what I had at the old QTH (which reminds me I need to erase all that out of my sig) well this MFJ box is just awful and quite the weenie SW getter if you ask me. The reviewers I've read must never have had a real SWL antenna of any significance to think this thing does such an awesome job.
But I'll keep it around-maybe because I didn't ground it somehow is why it's so darn noisy.
Vagrant you tried to warn me but I was smitten by the possibilities. Oh well.
Far as that MFJ box, you guys know what I had at the old QTH (which reminds me I need to erase all that out of my sig) well this MFJ box is just awful and quite the weenie SW getter if you ask me. The reviewers I've read must never have had a real SWL antenna of any significance to think this thing does such an awesome job.
But I'll keep it around-maybe because I didn't ground it somehow is why it's so darn noisy.
Vagrant you tried to warn me but I was smitten by the possibilities. Oh well.
The MFJ can only amplify what it receives. Indoors, it's going to receive a lot of noise from the myriad appliances and electronic do-dads surrounding it. The electrical lines in the house act as broadcast antennas blasting out whatever leaks back onto the grid. This is the problem with all indoor antennas. You're basically surrounded by broadcast antennas that are sending out low power signals.
If you can, take the MFJ out somewhere away from the house and other sources of interference and then give it a try. I realize this is counter to the whole reason you bought it, but it might give you better insight into why some people think it's pretty good. (I don't know personally. I've never tried it.) It may perform well at a remote hunting cabin with no electricity.
ridgescan
Member
Yeah you're right! It sucks but this means I can't run anything up in that room. But what doesn't suck is that soon I will be running my R8600 in the garage at the bench to the outdoor Wellbrook loop. The R75 can sit a while but I do need to run the SX-88 once in a while to keep it going and keep stuff formed in there. I like it in running condition. So I eventually need to hook something to it for reception through the bands because hauling its 100lb. carcass up and down the stairs aint an option.
Too much RFI noise inside my QTH for the 1020 to be of any use. However, taking it outdoors away from the noise it works quite nicely...
oh well, so much for an "indoor" active antenna. On the AM broadcast band the 1020 with its whip performs similar to the Crane TCA in a side by side comparison (although in some cases the TCA has an advantage due to it being able to be rotated). The 1020 has tons of gain, on strong sigs the 1020 gain needs to be turned way down to prevent RX overload.
oh well, so much for an "indoor" active antenna. On the AM broadcast band the 1020 with its whip performs similar to the Crane TCA in a side by side comparison (although in some cases the TCA has an advantage due to it being able to be rotated). The 1020 has tons of gain, on strong sigs the 1020 gain needs to be turned way down to prevent RX overload.
You might be able to nullify some of the noise. Check out some of the info from this episode of Ham Radio Workbench.
KB2GOM
Active Member
I apologize is this has already been covered in this thread, but one thing you might try before you do anything is . . . simply switch off all the power in the house and see what the noise situation is.
Last Friday, a storm brought down a tree which killed all power -- not just to our house but to our entire neighborhood . . . and the noise at my listening post was still pretty bad (I couldn't tell any difference vs. when the power is on in the house) . . . which is good to know when you start looking at solutions.
Last Friday, a storm brought down a tree which killed all power -- not just to our house but to our entire neighborhood . . . and the noise at my listening post was still pretty bad (I couldn't tell any difference vs. when the power is on in the house) . . . which is good to know when you start looking at solutions.
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