Topband: Cushcraft MA160 Vertical questions

[Greg - ZL3IX]

  Hi Paul,

I would say that S9 is a little on the high side for a suburban 
environment.  I also have a resonant antenna, and the background noise 
is about S5, or -97 dBm.  Is your S-meter well calibrated?

Are there any items of machinery with variable speed drives (VSD) in the 
vicinity?  Devices such utility water pumps with VSD's can push out a 
lot of hash on 160m.  They may well have some EMC filtering, but unless 
the components are big enough, the filtering may only be effective on 
the higher bands.

If you have a portable Rx, you may want to make yourself a small 
receiving loop.  Set it up in your yard, and measure the noise level on 
the portable.  Then drive out to somewhere quiet in the country, and 
re-do the measurement.  That test should give you the answers you need.

73, Greg, ZL3IX

On 2010-11-01 17:07, (N0AH) Bryon "Paul" Veal wrote:
> Questions for those who have one.
>
> 2.  We are averaging S-9 noise both during the day and at night, expected but wanting to know if others using it also have a higher ambient noise level- Since the antenna is resonant on band, expect the noise level but wondering if our RF environment is over the average in noise-  We live in the suburbs and most of the bands are actually pretty quiet on noise level- so this seems pretty high- We have a electric transformer near the antenna just in a box on the corner of the lot near the antenna but Excel Energy came out and tested it for possible RFI and it was clean-
>
>