Remember the mini field days and radio testing noise?
  • KE7RIPKE7RIP January 19

    http://youtu.be/2QGR5miWcLs Perhaps we were not properly grounding the radios?

    I remember Roland saying his noise level was about a 1 while up at the health department i think Mike and i had close to near quiet.
    Now the video has me looking around to see what i can ground to. If hes using a screen door, i'm thinking my metal shelves. $9 walmart special a few years ago. Wire line from the back of the radio to a screw on the frame of the shelf. The radio would be on my wooden desk. Not the metal shelf.

    But would a proper grounding be running a wire outside into the ground? What about the ground on the wall outlet? Yes i just asked if sticking a wire into a socket was a good thing >:) Asking because i have just started researching it and don't want to smoke up my homes air.

    Thoughts on proper grounding?

  • KE7RIPKE7RIP January 19

    Rolands 1 was meant to be a s4.

  • N7TZK January 31

    I don't know about Roland, but I had trouble with high noise level on my FT-897D. What got my attention was that others using the same model radio at similar time frame on same frequency at the health department didn't have that problem. Up until that point I thought it was just atmospheric noise... but then I disconnected the antenna and STILL had the noise issue. Thought I had a bad radio.

    Then someone (Ryan?) gave me the tip that sometimes that model has an issue with noise that goes away if you reset it back to factory defaults. I tried that and sure enough that got rid of my noise problem. Haven't had it ever since.

    So... grounding is always a good thing for a variety of reasons. But it is always worth verifying whether that noise is coming externally or internally. Disconnecting the antenna is a quick way to see which. Noise should barely register on the S-meter if you have the antenna disconnected. If that checks out OK, then you can start looking at antenna system problems or local interference issues. As for the YouTube video... it doesn't give enough particulars to know what happened there.

    Dave

  • KE7RIPKE7RIP February 1

    Is this an ongoing problem where the noise sneaks back in and builds up? Or a 1 time reset?

  • N7TZK February 5

    All I can say is that I haven't had to repeat it... yet!

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