WRYZ926 Posted February 5 Posted February 5 Small towns of 1,200 people or less are no better. The only way to get away from RF noise is to move away from everything. But you would still have to deal with any RF inside your home and on your property. Quote
TNFrank Posted February 5 Author Posted February 5 I did use the SWR Meter that's built into the QT80 to tune my 10M EFHW to 1.2:1 so I know it's good. SteveShannon and WRYZ926 2 Quote
WRYZ926 Posted February 5 Posted February 5 That's good that you have the antenna tuned. SWR will not have anything to do with hearing RF noise from an outside source. Try to narrow down the source of your RF noise and fix the issues if you can. Otherwise try changing the direction that you have your EFHW pointing to see if the noise floor changes. Quote
TNFrank Posted February 5 Author Posted February 5 If anything a better SWR would be more efficient so it'd bring in more noise. I used my power/SWR meter to initially tune the antenna and it looked good on the meter. I didn't know the radio also had a built in SWR meter. Once I found that out I used it to further tune the antenna using the radio's SWR meter which got me down to the 1.2:1 which I think is pretty good for a home built wire antenna. I have 6 Ferrite beads on the RG8x cable 19" down from the balun and I ordered some more to add a couple more. I'll also get the choke next Tuesday so hopefully that'll help too. Seems like early in the morning the static is less than later in the day so it's probably a solar kind of deal. Quote
WRYZ926 Posted February 5 Posted February 5 I wouldn't bother adding more than 7 ferrite beads to your coax. Anymore than 7 won't make any difference. More than seven and you to the point of diminishing returns. WSHL413 1 Quote
WSHL413 Posted February 5 Posted February 5 34 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said: I wouldn't bother adding more than 7 ferrite beads to your coax. Anymore than 7 won't make any difference. More than seven and you to the point of diminishing returns. There's a Youtube video where the presenter discusses the optimal number of ferrite beads for common mode current attenuation. If I recall, 5 good, 7 best, after that diminishing returns as you state. Interesting demonstration...beyond a certain point more is not always better for this purpose! Following this advice I added five beads at the feed point of my two roof-mounted dipoles. I think that does the job. Quote
WRYZ926 Posted February 5 Posted February 5 1 hour ago, WSHL413 said: If I recall, 5 good, 7 best, after that diminishing returns as you state. Interesting demonstration...beyond a certain point more is not always better for this purpose! There are several videos where people have tested that. Five ferrite beads works well for the higher HF bands while seven beads works better for the lower HF bands. WSHL413 1 Quote
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