07-04-2024, 07:23 PM
When I was first licenced, I was living on the northern outskirts of Sydney.
In those very early days I was blessed with S7 noise due to nearby 132kV power lines and railway overhead wiring.
As time went on the noise floor increased and increased until it was S9+ continuously. So I gave up on phone and moved to digital. Then along came the NBN and even digital was almost impossible.
A couple of years ago we moved to a semi-rural part of the Barossa Valley. Recently I have found the time and the will dig out some gear and start to muck around again.
After a couple of false starts I got FT-8 working with a bodgey install of a multi-tap helical mounted on the chook shed.
I was/am having some rf-in-the-shack so rejigged my earthing system and had a play this afternoon on 20m with FT-8. After getting a few in the log I decided to jump to USB and tune around. At first, I thought my S-meter was configured wrong, but no. Maybe AGC was off. Ahhh. Still nothing was registering. Suddenly, there we voices everywhere! The S-meter was bouncing around in the bottom half.
I had forgotten (or never knew) that radio background noise could be so quiet!
In those very early days I was blessed with S7 noise due to nearby 132kV power lines and railway overhead wiring.
As time went on the noise floor increased and increased until it was S9+ continuously. So I gave up on phone and moved to digital. Then along came the NBN and even digital was almost impossible.
A couple of years ago we moved to a semi-rural part of the Barossa Valley. Recently I have found the time and the will dig out some gear and start to muck around again.
After a couple of false starts I got FT-8 working with a bodgey install of a multi-tap helical mounted on the chook shed.
I was/am having some rf-in-the-shack so rejigged my earthing system and had a play this afternoon on 20m with FT-8. After getting a few in the log I decided to jump to USB and tune around. At first, I thought my S-meter was configured wrong, but no. Maybe AGC was off. Ahhh. Still nothing was registering. Suddenly, there we voices everywhere! The S-meter was bouncing around in the bottom half.
I had forgotten (or never knew) that radio background noise could be so quiet!
Colin
Barossa Valley, SAP. PF95ln
(aka VK5CSW)
Barossa Valley, SAP. PF95ln
(aka VK5CSW)