SDS 200 static or interference when used in a vehicle

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TedTobias

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Yet another thread that had to have a meaningful title added to it.
Hi Happy Day,
Those who have the SDS200 mounted in the car pick up any static from car accessories?

Thanks so Much!
Theodore
 

TedTobias

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Thanks all, going to install wanted to make sure was not going to have to find filters to cut out static or other problems.

Thanks so much I really appreciate your help!
Theodore
 

ratboy

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I have an occasional "click" or snap that I hear randomly when I have my SDS200 plugged into the 12V socket. Other than a couple of freqs that need to be locked out (vary depending on what the stereo is tuned to), it's fine.
 

n1chu

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Could just be differences in temperature in a mobile setup (expansion/contraction). Is the radio mounted or lying loose on the seat? If mounted, either in the dash or console it may be the radio adjusting to its fit once it starts to warm up, which is not a concern. If loose, it could be the radio case itself warming up, again not a concern. Does it click when in the house? Doubt it has anything to do with the stereo radio...
 

N9JIG

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Many electronic devices and systems do send out spurious transmissions, current vehicles are loaded with computers and electronics. My old Expedition's Nav system sent out several "birdie" type signals that I had to lock out continuously from my scanners until I started turning off the radio by the power button instead of the ignition (in order to save the "Permanent" lockouts properly).

Try driving up to a gas pump someday with a scanner or other radio, they are extremley noisy!
 

03msc

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Try driving up to a gas pump someday with a scanner or other radio, they are extremley noisy!

Mercy yes. Basically have to turn off the scanners/radios in many cases when approaching the pumps.

And further on the OP's question, different cars are different so it's hard to say for sure. However, it most likely won't be so bad that the scanner is not useable.
 

n1chu

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When you locked out those annoying frequencies you should power cycle the scanner. That way it gets written to memory. Turn the scanner off And then back on... you’ve just written those avoided channels to memory. And the next time the radio powers up they will stay avoided.

Not for nothing but a birdie is generated from within the device. The scanner also produces interfering signals. In some cases the intermittent frequency (IF) can be changed if one of those birdies happened to land on a frequency you wanted to monitor and didn’t want the scanner to “lock up” on it and not continue scanning. And it may not be an issue with the newer scanners, I’ll leave that to those better informed than I to answer.
 

03msc

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Yes, that would help for sure. That's advisable for any install, if possible. Especially for radios but scanners it helps, too.
 

ratboy

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In my '88 Blazer, about a year after we got it, we were sitting someplace and my dog started barking and we could hear him through the speakers. I yelled at the dash and could hear myself, too. Never got any worse, and it was a funny thing to see people's reactions to it.
 

ratboy

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Could just be differences in temperature in a mobile setup (expansion/contraction). Is the radio mounted or lying loose on the seat? If mounted, either in the dash or console it may be the radio adjusting to its fit once it starts to warm up, which is not a concern. If loose, it could be the radio case itself warming up, again not a concern. Does it click when in the house? Doubt it has anything to do with the stereo radio...

No, it's coming from the speaker of the SDS200, and if I tune the stereo to one of the local FM stations (rare, as I'm almost always on Sirius 100 or listening to one of my USB sticks), a carrier stops one of the railband freqs and breaks the squelch with a hiss. I have no spark or fan buzzing, just the click every so often and the birdy/carrier thing. I can't think of any car/truck/SUV I've owned that didn't interfere a little with my scanners. Anything made recently is light years better than my first couple of vehicles from 1974 and 1977. My 1977 Dodge Pickup had a ton of alternator noise, heater fan noise, and it would make a slight click/snap when the brakes were applied. Oh, I forgot, my PSR500 and Pro 106 both pick up hash from the dash if you put them up against the front of it. I either put them on the top of the dash, or in the cup holder. The hash is almost all railband interfering.
 

n1chu

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Thanks for elaborating. So much for my non-electrical causes.
I run mostly agencies that are PL’ed. Meaning my noise floor may go through the roof when I pull into a gas station but I don’t hear it. (A few air band non-PL’ed frequencies will lock up my scanner but I just temporarily “Avoid” them.)
All interference is getting into the scanner by either the antenna input or when the scanner is in close proximity to other electronic equipment. (How close you need to be is dependent upon how powerful the device emitting the emissions is.) The scanner’s circuitry and the gas stations electronics components are resonating with each other. Eliminating this sort of interference is difficult when we take into account the “wideband” characteristics of scanners.
I had the opportunity to be involved with the testing procedure of hand fabricated test boxes for an atmospheric control system being installed on a passenger airliner. After each test box was fabricated it was placed in a Faraday Cage where a signal generator was used to identify issues within the spectrum on all known frequencies other electronic equipment aboard the aircraft were known to unintentionally emit. What good was a piece of test gear if it was susceptible to splurious emissions? Much shielding and grounding techniques were incorporated in the building of those test boxes. Even the dimensions of the metal box was subjected to scrutiny... the metal case itself acted as a resonator in some cases! But I’ll leave that to the engineers-way above my pay grade!
 

ratboy

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Most annoying RFI type of mess I have been involved with, other than my present HF killing interferences at work and home, it was back when I got started decoding HF RTTY, SITOR, FAX, etc. The monitors I tried were awful, the cables were bad, the decoder box and most of the printers would spew HF spurs and it was just a hassle sometimes to really get anything to decode unless the signal strength was huge, and then of course the summer static crashes were another thing to deal with. I had at one point a really ugly amber monitor that had it's plastic cabinet painted with copper paint inside and partially outside too, and cables with dozens of ferrite cores on/in them. Eventually, I got rid of about 95% of the hash by changing monitors until I found one that had a steel case on it, cables with built in ferrite chokes in them (pure luck I was showing some guy my HF stuff and he gave me the name of a company who made custom cables with ferrite chokes and full shielded options), and adding a ton of grounds. $$$$, but those cables worked. About the time I got everything cleaned up, around 1990, the amount of HF stuff worth decoding dropped tremendously and kept declining as it moved to satellite. I spent a lot of hours using my Info-Tech/Universal decoder boxes, and a lot of money on them too! Weird thing, I can still remember many of the keyboard presses to switch polarity, etc. My NRD-515 and 525's were always on and my mother used to complain endlessly about the dot matrix printer noise when I was printing FAX maps and pics. One time we went on a short trip and I had forgotten to turn off the auto print on my M-7000, and went away all day, and came home to about 3/4 of a box of that tractor printer paper all over the room. The auto start worked OK, but it rarely stopped very well. Summer static crashes kept it going, until it got a solid stop signal. I still have some really scary Telex messages from cruise ships that were stuck in port due to being unsafe and the list of defects on one of those ships is like 20 feet long. Stuff like rotted out lifeboats rats in huge numbers, and my favorite, life jackets that were falling apart due to mildew and mold. And then there was the crewmember on another ship who went crazy and attacked the captain. He was sedated by the ships doctor, dropped off at a port with some cash and a plane ticket and sent back home. But the safety stuff on those ships was endless, and prevented me from ever even think about taking one, as all the "Big Name" ship companies had scary bad ships out there.
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