Noise

I had heard a bit of pulsing noise on all the FT8 bands the other night.

On the Morning Grind Net, Rick, WB3CSY, mentioned this as well and that he suspects it came from a solar flare that was hitting us.

When I first started with the X6100, I’d see some noise that buried real signals when plugged into AC power.

Running on battery was fine, and running on the external lead-acid 12V battery was OK too. For weeks, I used the battery to smooth the noise. I’d run an AC power supply in parallel with the battery and turn it up just high enough that I didn’t see noise in the waterfall. The battery smoothed the power.

I switched to a LiFePO4 battery, and I found the built-in charging circuit made it hard to balance input power and output power just right to keep it smooth.

I asked around on the X6100 mailing list and I got 2 suggestions I took:

• a filter I can use with any cheap power supply I already have
• a cleaner, and inexpensive, switching power supply from Ateck that puts out a fixed 12V/5A

I purchased both to try, and both helped immensely, each on their own.

I wired up the filter with some 5525 connectors and printed a case for it. I use the filter in combination with my adjustable 24V/5A power supply on the go. That higher-voltage power supply is also useful to charge the LiFePO4 battery at 14.1V. The battery also lives in my box for portable operation.

I use the Ateck power supply on my desk by itself to power the radio at home.

Running the 41-foot (12.5m) random wire, it works great for 10m and 20m. It tunes really quickly. The power supply gives lots of buzzing and noise on these bands. ATT tames the power supply noise pretty well.