I was making a rather serious (given my small antennas) effort today in the
Illinois QSO Party and had to deal with this intermittent noise I have here
for pretty much the entire contest. It is a raspy, hash type noise that
will be on for 2 or 3 seconds, then will end, but come back every 20 to 30
seconds. I have figured out it is not in my house, and doesn't seem to be
power line noise. At one time I thought I had localized it to a house
about 4 houses to the west of me, but the house is now unoccupied, but the
noise is still there.
Anyways, I was using the Kenwood TS950SD which I just picked up, and it is
a great rig with lots of receiver tools. The noise blanker pretty much
knocked out the noise, but it also produced plenty of IMD products when the
band got busy and put a raspy sound on many of the signals, so I was having
to turn the NB off and on trying to make the signals as best as I could
with this noise. Even engaged the attenuator a few times on 40m which
helped a little, but also weakened signals.
I have had a slight windfall recently and can afford to get a newer, better
rig if I want. Are there any recent contest quality rigs that have noise
blankers that take out many different types of noise, but don't mess with
the receive signals and receiver dynamic range? I wonder if the DSP based
noise blankers are better? An older rig would be ok also if it would meet
those criteria.
73 John AF5CC
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|