What ... more noise?

(Is this getting boring yet?)

How much interference can the average DXer handle?

There was some minor tropo to Belgium around 10:00 today and German troposcatter seemed pretty good too, but I hadn't got time to listen then. At around 14:00 I seized a window of opportunity to tune across the band as the German scatter was still pretty good. Or was it possible because my noise levels had subsided a little?

After a few minutes listening I heard a clicking sound. A kind of clicking white noise with regular clicks less than a second apart. "New noise" I thought, "This should go nicely with the other new noise I discovered yesterday morning - some 'mush' I now have when beaming to the north.

The clicking was weak, fortunately, yet still irritating and could be heard with good clarity, over the top of one bar, noise free signals. I persevered and conducted a scan of the German stations while they were still audible, but the scatter had already started to decrease in strength. Luckily, I managed a decent scan of the entire band, logging the known signals before an even stronger 'mush' decided to appear. It arrived in two stages roughly two seconds apart, beginning with a very obvious white noise effect, but then increasing in strength a couple of seconds later, obliterating not only the German scatter, but also the clicking noise. Nice! So I now have interference which interferes with my interference!

Good DX all!

John