WRYZ926

What brand/model of battery are you using? And the easy fix is to remove the battery and keep it away from the radio when in use.

Band conditions on the higher HF bands are all bad right now. I am hardly hearing anyone on FT8 on 10m, 12m, 15m or 17m right now.

@Northcutt114 I'm glad that you have figured out the source of your noise. Are you using LifePo4 batteries? LifePo4 batteries have a BMS 9battery management system) built in. Some batteries also have bluetooth. Both can possibly cause interference as you have found out. Make sure you have ferrite beads on the radio's power wires if you haven't done so already. I use a separate battery box for my go boxes to help eliminate any of these types of issues. I know that is a hassle when trying to keep everything in a small package. You can try to make a shield from sheet metal to separate the battery from the radio. That will help. For the antenna issue. I would take the SO239 connector off and make sure there are no loose or broken connections and that the solder joints look good. I don't know if the coil itself can be disassembled or not. But that would be another place to check for a loose or broken connection. Contact the seller and see if you can return or exchange it if you don't feel like trying mess with it yourself.

I'm not sure that there is any adjustments to the compression on the G90. I will have to take a deep dive into the extended manual. I do believe it is either on or off. I run mine with compression on and mic gain set at 10. I get a lot of comments on how well I sound. I hold the hand mic at an angle too. As far as signal reports go, that will depend on a lot of things such as band conditions, local noise floor for the other person, etc, etc. I will spend the extra money on a good clean charge controller when I do decide to get a solar panel setup. I will also try to keep all of that as far away from my radio and antenna as possible.

Mic gain setting will be different for each person. Your voice pitch and tone will be different from other people. I would say that gain set a 8 is fine for you. I find that gain set to 10 works best for me.

I would first add some ferrite beads/toroid to the solar panel wires. You have shown that the solar panel is producing noise when it is sunny out. And you can play with the RF gain, noise blanker, and notch filters on the G90 as Steve suggested. All of this will help with what you hear but it won't help eliminate the source of the noise. I have not really messed with the noise blanker much one my G90. I do use the RIT feature if someone I am talking to is slightly off frequency. I will suggest getting the extended G90 manual from Radioddity. It costs $9.99. It is well worth the cost. Now you should have gotten the extended manual if you bought the G90 as a bundle package in the last few months. https://www.radioddity.com/products/ebook-xiegu-g90-extended-manual

@Northcutt114 thanks for the additional information. I would say that you are on the right path and it is the solar panel/controller causing RF issues. An easy test would be to disconnect the solar panel and move it away from your radio the next time someone says you have a lot of QRM. You can try some clamp on ferrite beads on each wire of the solar panel or you can get either a very large clamp on ferrite bead or 240-43 toroid and get as many wraps of the wire through it. What you are doing is making a common mode choke so the more wraps you can get the better. Any type of ferrite bead/toroid will help.

Okay, I didn't realize the controller was built in. I'm still not 100% sure that it's the solar panel/controller causing the noise since it is not a constant noise. But it vey well could be the cause of the noise. RF does weird things at times just to mess with us. Definitely try the clamp on ferrite beads. They may or may not help but they sure won't hurt. It might be overkill putting clamp on beads on both ends of any wire or cable but I do it anyway. That helps keep wires and cables from acting like antennas. IF you don't have ferrite beads big enough to get a few wraps of wire through them, then you ant them to be snug on the wire, By snug, I mean that they grab onto the insulations just enough to hold them in place. You don't want the bead to actually dig into or cut the insulation. Also try to keep the solar panel and battery away from the radio and coax as best as you can. I usually keep my battery box sitting on the ground and slightly under the table when possible.

It would not hurt to put ferrite beads on the wires going from the solar panel to the charge controller and from the controller to the battery.

I put ferrites on both positive and ground wires. I usually use ones big enough to get at least 3 wraps of wire through. I put ferrites on both ends of the power wires. I will sometimes use a toroid and do several wraps of both wires through it at the radio end.

The solar panel and charge controller could be one source of noise. But you would think that it would be constant and not intermittent. I haven't tried using a solar panel to keep my batteries topped off when doing POTA. I have ferrite beads on the G90 power lead that plugs directly into my battery box and I haven't had any noise issues.

Unfortunately I have had people unlock/MARS mod their radios and then program channels 8-14 to wide band and full power. Setting channels 8-14 to low power and narrow band won't cause much of an issue even if the lowest power setting is 5 watts. As you said, some people don't care about following rules or care if they are causing interference, they are going to do what they want. The OP's question was answered. No Part 95 certified mobile radio will transmit on channels 8-14 since they can't be set to 1/2 watt output power. Most will only go down to 5 watts.

And that is one reason why I don't care for people using amateur radios that have been unlocked. An unlocked radio will allow you to transmit on channels 8-14 at what ever the max power output of the radio is. And an unlocked radio will also allow you to transmit on wide band on channels 8-14. Both can cause interference issues on the 467 repeater channels, especially if you are running 50 watts.

Fixed my typo. The main effects of solar storms CME's takes 2 to 3 days on average. Some times it takes 4 - 5 days before we see any improvement of band conditions. Looking at current conditions. The X-ray is at M 1.9, K index - 3, BZ - -4.4. A K index between 1 to 4 is usually good. A high X-ray means bad conditions. Also having a BZ in the negative is bad. The lower the BZ, the greater chance for auroras at lower latitudes.

Corona Mass Ejections usually take 2 - 3 days before we see the full effect on the HF bands. We will see some affect right away but the biggest effects take longer to see.

You have to watch tuners too. I know with the LDG brand, they only recommend 75 watts on digital modes with their 200 watt tuner. You can run up to 300 watts digital with their 600 watt tuner and up to 500 watts with their 1000 watt tuner. Most tuners will only handle 25% to 70% of the full rated power when running CW and digital modes. LDG averages between 40% to 60% of full power rating when running CW and digital modes. I had a guy with an LDG100 that had to replace it several times when it would stop working. LDG finally decided to ask him what he was doing to blow the tuners, He was running 100 watts FT8 through the LDG 100 watt tuner. Knock on wood, the only thing I smoked was a 50 watt dummy load pushing 100 watts through it. It didn't let any smoke out but it sure did melt the solder joint on the resister. Luckily that was an easy fix by re soldering the resistor.

I use LOTW (Logbook Of The World) and the QRZ logbook. QRZ will accept confirmations from LOTW but LOTW will not accept confirmations from QRZ QRZ is also more stable and does not go down as often. Plus QRZ is very quick to fix any issues. The same can't be said about LOTW. When they did their most recent upgrade, they went from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. The old tired look of their website hasn't been updated since the 90's And when LOTW goes down, it can be down for days or even months. The guys chasing the serious awards all use LOTW and will only confirm through LOTW. I have received a few SQL cards in the mail. But most people don't send them out anymore due to the cost of the cards and cost of postage.

The 15m, 20m and 40m bands are the go to when at the bottom of the solar cycle,

An added cost to using a tuner is making sure your antennas can handle that much power. Forget about using any cheaper baluns and unun as most are only rated for 100 or 200 watts max and that's only for voice modes. Most baluns, ununs and antennas rated for 100 watts will only handle between 20 to 60 watts on CW and digital modes. Trying to run 100 watts CW or digital through a 100 watt balun/unun will melt the wires.

Fox hunting is a good way to train for emergency situations like amass described.

I have an Arrow Antennas hand held 2m Yagi and 2m loop for this type of stuff. So far all I have used either antenna was for chasing down RFI issues. They work fine. I like seeing the home brewed antennas and other options for commercially available antennas.

Most of the bands were pretty bad today, especially 10m and 12m. I struggled to make any contacts on those two bands even on FT8. I did manage a few contacts on 15m and 20m but 17m was just as bad as 10m and 12m. HAMQSL, VOACAP, and any other propagation tools are just guide, you can't take them as 100% accurate. I have had HAMQSL and VOACAP show poor band conditions and I still made plenty of contacts and I have had both say conditions were good and struggled to make contacts. Falling snow, thunderstorms, high voltage power lines can all cause a high noise floor. Solar storms greatly affect HF too. 2023 and 2024 were great for the 10 meter band. But we are on the down hill slide of the solar cycle. Band conditions on 10m and 12m will only get worse as we approach the low point of the solar cycle. Each cycle lasts about 11 years.

I kept taking the practice tests until I got a consistent 93% or higher every time. I should get back to studying for the Extra.

You will use the math whether you realize it or not. I won't argue with you about it , you do you.

You actually use quite a bit of math when figuring out the lengths of different antennas. And math is used when building baluns, unun, and common mode chokes. A somewhat related story. I barely passed college algebra by the skin of my teeth. I can't do math on paper. Put me in a machine shop, give me a block of metal and a blue print and I will do trig all day long without any problems. The reason I mentioned that is the math on the general test comes to you once you start putting it into hands on applications.