Topband: background noise experiments

[N7DF]

While I was stationed in Guam I had an opportunity to take a sailing trip to Truk Island.  As an experiment I monitored the background noise on various frequencies as we travelled away from Guam where the power grid is notoriously noisy.  It dropped off significantly on the bands above 10 MHz in the first 50 miles but on the lower bands it was still evident out to nearly a hundred miles.  We had an SGC tuner on the 60 foot mast as an antenna and the whole pacific ocean as a ground plane..  An additional thing we found was that the buzz that you get when touching an ungrounded audio input also went away.
   
  Another instance of background noise was noticed at KL7Y's station.  It was about 45 miles as the crow flies from Anchorage.  As we turned the beams past Anchorage we could notice a definite increase in background noise as a loud hiss.  On 40 meters it was several S-units.

       
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