A while back, I decided to clean up some wiring in my shack. I grouped some
wires together with either twist-ties or a clamp-on toroid, routed them to
look nice, and that kind of thing. The end result was an RFI disaster! I
went from having no RFI problems to very bad ones. So, I undid all of my
work, and went back to a spread-out, loose, untidy look. It's messy, but it
works fine - well, mostly.
Everything seems to run well under SSB contest conditions. Last weekend,
though, during 40+ hours of running HP RTTY, my laptop and/or microHAM MKII
crashed about a half-dozen times. I eventually solved the problem by
unplugging as many cables as I could from the laptop, throwing a spare
toroid on a coil of USB cable going from the PC to the MKII, and dialing
back my power output a little on 20 and 40.
I've read Jim K9YC's cookbook many times, and have followed his guidelines
for the coax going to the antenna. I've also coiled quite a few of the other
RF/IF/Ethernet/long wires through #31 toroids. But a few problems persist.
The additional challenge for me is that my shack is pretty close to my beam,
so the level of RF can be relatively high.
Is there a better, more methodical approach to handling RFI on wiring in the
shack? Is there a reasonable rule of thumb for deciding when wires can be
(or should be) grouped or have toroids on them, and when they shouldn't?
What have others done in situations like this?
73, Rick ZL2HAM
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