>it is now several dB
>nosier even in remote areas compared to 20 years ago.
This is the scariest part of the whole thing. The noise floor just
goes up and up.
Still, after operating from the actual suburbs and an apartment
complex for the last six years, I would be happy to have a location
like yours, Tom ;-)
I look back fondly in this respect on my start in this hobby from my
parents' house at the edge of Erie, PA. I didn't run into bleeps and
bloops and switching hash or anything as I tuned across the bands...
just ordinary static; maybe some of that was composite propagated
noise from many manmade sources, but it was flat, uniform, and very
quiet.
I remember a summer home from college after I put up a tribander and
had bought my buddy's old TV for $25 at school... I noticed that I had
a weird artificial noise toward JA on 15m. Took me a little while to
figure out that toward JA was also pointed right at the dang TV, and
that was when I learned that these things never actually shut off.
Turned out that the TV was fine when it was *on*; it's just the
standby state that causes 15m noise. Of course, I still have the TV
and my girlfriend still sits down to find it unplugged when I'm trying
to work something weak on 15m...
73,
Dan
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