over the last 18 months or more I have noticed that my noise level on 160 metres has risen to over S9 much to my disgust. We have neighbours either side of us but they are not close (on 10 acres here) so had put it down to a case of some one buying a new but noisy electronic device, sigh another band lost to me.
A recent extended power black out allowed me to connect my FT 817 to the 160 metre antenna and I could see the band was quiet . . . Ah there is hope but every thing returned to noisy once the power came back on
Now, a little back ground, next to the house we have a shed that houses our satellite internet dish, router and network switch, a second shed further away from that, has our stables and my shack. The house, shed and stables are all connected via multiple underground CAT5 cabling for Ethernet, intercoms and control signals for lights.
The satellite equipment is powered from a small 240 -> 24vDC brick that has not been changed in the last 12 years but it turns out that this was the culprit of my noise. I had assumed it was not a problem as it had been quiet in the past but No, it had developed some form of mild fault that was wiping out the low bands of HF and was detectable up to 50MHz.
I have recently built a linear power supply for the satellite equipment, it also powers the router and the network switch. This has made a HUGE improvement to my noise levels and now find my self chasing those elusive fish net beacons on 1.8MHz now I can finally hear signals again.
http://www.genesisradio.com.au/VK2DX/fishnet.html
Moral of the story for me, never trust a switch mode power supply
Would love to hear others experiences.
Regards,
