Here are two screen grabs of some noise I recording overnight. I am guessing this is thermostat or timer related, probably the latter in view of the fairly precise lengths of the noise bursts, though I have seen this happening for slightly longer durations - perhaps doubling this time.
Overnight 15-03-14
Overnight 15-03-14 (Close Up)
Typically, the noise goes up and down in strength with regularity, and it does it abruptly but without a click or additional noise. As you will see, the noise spikes came in blocks of 14 minutes and 10 seconds when at its strongest. The noise is a white noise, as you would hear on an empty FM frequency. When the noise is at its quietest, it produces a slightly raspy 50Hz hum.
Has anybody seen anything quite like this before?
This came about accidentally tonight as I had positioned my antenna to the east for meteor scatter, but the strong overnight winds here swung it round to the south.
I still consider the new QTH to be very quiet on the whole. The noise to the south is still nowhere near as bad as where we used to live and the FM5 when vertical almost loses it completely here. Putting the FM5
higher up also reduces the noise to an acceptable level.
While trialling the XDR GTK software on a laptop in the car yesterday evening, together with home made FM whip, I was staggered to hear a huge amount of noise around town. All residential areas I drove through had white noise here and there. I could only estimate that at least 50-60% of properties were subject to noise of one type or another. One particular hotel, close to the sea front, with bright,neon signs wiped out the entire FM band for two hundred metres around it. I watched the XDR glow as I drove along the main drag (Grand Parade), past the pier and other seafront attractions.
No noise is good noise!
John
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