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Sunday 29 November 2015

Medium Wave ..... OBLITERATED!

A few weeks ago I abandoned DXing the medium waves from home as there was some interference, not hugely strong, but strong enough to bury all those nice weak DX signals.

Wondering if it had passed, I put the flag back on the garden this afternoon, intending to move it to another part of the garden should the interference still be there, but this time the band was completely saturated with strong noise. I presume it's PLT but I don't know for sure. Maybe somebody will recognise the patterns in this video I just made.




Even BBC Radio 4 long wave and my local BBC Radio Lincolnshire have lots of noise mixing with them.


Edited January 23rd 2016:
About a week ago, my noise problem disappeared. Since then I have had virtually no noise at all across the bands, apart from occasional daytime bits and pieces, which are usually very weak. 

I can only guess that whatever it was may have been a device or, more likely, a power supply which had become faulty, though it did seem like PLT a lot of the time. I say this because the noise became progressively worse over the weeks, peaking at S9+40dB. 

I was going to contact OFCOM again, but the bands have enjoyed a whole week of relative silence and, throughout the night time, medium wave has been as quiet as when out and about in the wilds using a Beverage. 

2 comments:

  1. Hi John

    I feel your pain with regards to the noise problem. My QTH here used to be very RF quiet but I have had a noise problem for a year or so which makes MW reception hard and extends into the HF bands. Here is an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eekXwHudpFg not quite the same as your noise though. This noise has disappeared sometimes for a month or two but always returns. I am not convinced mine is PLT as even during a recent power cut it was still there. I hope yours is temporary.
    Regards
    Kevin

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    Replies
    1. Hello Kevin.

      It's mostly been the same here - I have been lucky over the years with quiet bands. FM was bad at the last address but there was a way around it by using an antenna lower down on the garden.

      The HF bands have enjoyed a really low noise floor here until this happened. All my MW DXing is being done out mobile lately using short Beverage antennas. I had three sessions last week but conditions were very poor. That's another problem this season. Hopefully the sun will be much quieter soon, probably winter 2016/2017 should see some real improvements. This winter is so dire most of the time that I know I am not missing much.

      Cheers - John

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