If there's anyone (those skilled in the art of hunting RFI sources, Amateur Ops, etc.) nearby that would be willing to assist me to locate the source of some terrible broadband RFI that's been plaguing me at my QTH for over a year, I'd love the help. I'm located in The Woodlands area (North of Houston) and am interested in HF communications, but this broadbanded RFI wipes out large swaths of the HF spectrum at my location.
I have an AirSpy HF+ Discovery SDR receiver and another HF transceiver with waterfall/spectrum display, etc. I have pictures/screenshots of what the offending trash/RFI looks like, what frequencies it's seen on, etc. It's best described as a repeating pattern type signal, my primary antenna at the moment is a 10 meter vertical which is resonate from approximately 26-30mhz - so it's obviously very strong within this frequency range but sometimes you can even see the repeating pattern RFI on lower bands on the same antenna.
When observing the signal(s) on the spectrum scope/waterfall they appear to be repeating/identically spaced oscillating/spiraling signals which grow and shrink in size and drift up and down in frequency slightly. I haven't actually figured out a way to record the signals over a broad range of frequencies over a long period (24-72 hours) to look for patterns that may be clues as to the source. I read a blog where someone did this with a number of programs (one of them being HDSDR I think) but it looked fairly complicated.
I enlisted the help of a HAM friendly RFI hunter for a local power company and he came out and sniffed around with his equipment and told me it's not the power company equipment in my neighborhood and that it was more than likely coming from a house nearby. He even showed me a house a few doors down that was spewing objectionable levels of RF, but that was about where his help ended (understandably). The gentleman was using a Radar Engineers Model 243 RFI locator. A quick google shows this device is mostly intended to locate "spark gap" type RFI - why would the house 3 doors down be spewing super high levels of RFI detected by this device? I knocked on the door of this home and the homeowner was less than friendly and seemingly uninterested in assisting me to locate the source (suggested we flip his main breaker while I watched my SDR receiver to confirm his house is the source) and he didn't seem really interested in that.
I've killed the main breaker to my own house and had my direct neighbors do the same, the noise is definitely not coming from my home or my direct neighbors. If I was certain my noise was coming from the house 3 doors down, I'd be more confident in getting more aggressive with asking for his help otherwise I'll pursue other avenues (FCC, ARRL, ?) but at the moment I'm unsure how to proceed. The noise must go...
I'm a general class op looking to upgrade to Extra but I've got to get this problem fixed before I feel like proceeding. Any tips would be greatly appreciated, I'm at my wits end with this as it pretty much ruins any chance of enjoying HF from my house.
I have an AirSpy HF+ Discovery SDR receiver and another HF transceiver with waterfall/spectrum display, etc. I have pictures/screenshots of what the offending trash/RFI looks like, what frequencies it's seen on, etc. It's best described as a repeating pattern type signal, my primary antenna at the moment is a 10 meter vertical which is resonate from approximately 26-30mhz - so it's obviously very strong within this frequency range but sometimes you can even see the repeating pattern RFI on lower bands on the same antenna.
When observing the signal(s) on the spectrum scope/waterfall they appear to be repeating/identically spaced oscillating/spiraling signals which grow and shrink in size and drift up and down in frequency slightly. I haven't actually figured out a way to record the signals over a broad range of frequencies over a long period (24-72 hours) to look for patterns that may be clues as to the source. I read a blog where someone did this with a number of programs (one of them being HDSDR I think) but it looked fairly complicated.
I enlisted the help of a HAM friendly RFI hunter for a local power company and he came out and sniffed around with his equipment and told me it's not the power company equipment in my neighborhood and that it was more than likely coming from a house nearby. He even showed me a house a few doors down that was spewing objectionable levels of RF, but that was about where his help ended (understandably). The gentleman was using a Radar Engineers Model 243 RFI locator. A quick google shows this device is mostly intended to locate "spark gap" type RFI - why would the house 3 doors down be spewing super high levels of RFI detected by this device? I knocked on the door of this home and the homeowner was less than friendly and seemingly uninterested in assisting me to locate the source (suggested we flip his main breaker while I watched my SDR receiver to confirm his house is the source) and he didn't seem really interested in that.
I've killed the main breaker to my own house and had my direct neighbors do the same, the noise is definitely not coming from my home or my direct neighbors. If I was certain my noise was coming from the house 3 doors down, I'd be more confident in getting more aggressive with asking for his help otherwise I'll pursue other avenues (FCC, ARRL, ?) but at the moment I'm unsure how to proceed. The noise must go...
I'm a general class op looking to upgrade to Extra but I've got to get this problem fixed before I feel like proceeding. Any tips would be greatly appreciated, I'm at my wits end with this as it pretty much ruins any chance of enjoying HF from my house.
