John, you have no nearby AM stations, mine is 15 miles away blowing 50KW of
RF at Canada. On a communications monitor I observed this spike as the
killer spike but other nearer spikes though not as powerful were heard at
various points on my radio as splatter and cross mod. The broadcast band
filter took care of my problem If there are any local high power
transmitters for other services, anywhere in the hf spectrum, they would be
suspect. The solution for this would be a band pass filter
wherever an offending spike appears, because once the first mixer is
breached and overloaded, resulting combined rf detection is random and
pernicious. I like to call it blotto.
Before I got the I.C.E. filter model 402x for $36, only the attenuation
button gave me any kind of relief, but did not eliminate all of the
distortion. Lowering the rf gain did not appreciably contain ongoing IMD.
What did help is using my quad to recieve low band signals, which in effect
acted a high pass filter. I hated the fact that I had to get an outboard
add-on to solve the problem. What also helped was the expert explanation I
got from a ham friend, a retired rf engineer, who dispassionately explained
the facts of life regarding this technology. My conclusion was that I was
both happy to be a Ten Tec fan, and unhappy that Ten Tec hadnt recommended
the solution. But I do understand why Ten Tec doesnt "go there."
So you must have to be scratching your head, beneath that foil hat, whether
its all worth it. My cup is still better than half full because I am having
a wonderful time with all that the Jupiter brings to the shack. Its a
marvelous rig. Rhodes and Schwarz notwithstanding.
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