[RFI] RFI to AM and ham freqs in new vehicles - Now Starlink RFI

[Steve Dyer W1SRD]

Interesting that Jim's Starlink is noisy.
I have the newer square dish and second gen router with 50' of cable 
from router to dish right under beams. Quiet as a mouse.
It accepts RFI as well. No hiccups at full power up to 6m.
73,
Steve
W1SRD

On 5/21/2023 11:34 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
> On 5/21/2023 6:11 PM, n0tt1 at juno.com wrote:
>>   Personally, I think it's
>> because they don't want to deal with filtering out all those RF
>> square waves in the vehicles.  Or maybe they know that
>> EU is, or has already, discontinued Broadcast AM radio.
>
> This has been widely reported in the press for several months. I've 
> been driving a Tesla Model 3 for 2.5 years, and have a VHF/UHF FM rig 
> in it, no observable RF noise. When looking for installation advice, I 
> came across several youtube videos from an OT in 5-land who first did 
> that, then advanced to an HF rig. He reported that to be pretty noise 
> free as well. The 12V system won't support a lot of power. I've 
> charged at home from the outbuilding that houses my shack, first from 
> a 120V/15A outlet, now from 240V/30A, can't hear any noise with my 
> Kenwood TH-F6A (wide-band RX) probing along the power cable, or in my 
> radios in the shack.
>
> The Tesla designers were VERY good about RF shielding that's quite 
> frequency-selective. A talkie with a duck is deaf inside the vehicle, 
> but cell phone works great inside the vehicle at knee level in the 
> center pedestal (and, of course, in my pocket).
>
> As to RFI to the AM band -- I haven't probed that, but no issues on 
> 160M when charging.
>
> Vehicles are sold worldwide, so discontinuance of AM broadcasting in 
> any large market could drive mfrs to drop AM in vehicles. AM has been 
> on a long downward spiral for several decades, and noise has long been 
> a problem. A colleague was chief engineer at WLS in the '80s and '90s 
> (maybe longer, don't remember when he retired). Their 50kW clear on 
> 890 kHz was maybe 25-30 miles S of Chicago, and had chronic complaints 
> of ignition noise from Fords that wiped them out in the northern 
> suburbs -- I'm guessing 50 miles or so from their omni stick. And as 
> we all know, noise has increased exponentially in the intervening 
> decades, and the AM band takes the greatest hit.
>
> Starlink, a related company, is quite the opposite. The PSU for my 
> dish is mondo-noisy, took a half-dozen ferrites with multiple turns to 
> quiet it down. I love that system, which I bought as redundancy for 
> ComCast, whose power backup was next to non-existent. They've since 
> improved quite a lot. But with no cell service in the mountains, we 
> can't be without internet, so it's great to have both systems.
>
> 73, Jim K9YC
>
> 73,
>
>
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