antron99/solarcon

just put a antron 99 /solarcon up, but i have s5 of noise (static) would earthing the poles its mounted on help?

73s
rich j

I think many of us have been shocked by the level of noise coming in, it was above S9 for me making all but the strongest of signals completely unreadable and the radio almost unusable.

I set up a 12v battery as my power supply and turned everything off in my home turning one appliance/electrical device on at a time to see what was causing it and once identified I put ferrite chokes on the power cords of the offending items, a coax choke or ugly balun in my antenna feedline and earthed the equipment.

It would seem modern living is getting its revenge on radio users and instead of us causing the interference it seems the other way around, I have noticed LED lights and wifi extenders were particularly bad in my case.

After making these modifications around the shack I have the background noise level down t a very acceptable S3 on FM and S1 or lower on USB allowing me to use a pre-amp to drag in those distant signals.

My antenna is on extension poles that go to the ground at the moment so I haven't tried earthing the antenna so I would be interested to hear how you got on.

73's

Alan

It's a sign of the times.
All the electrical kit we all have running especially chargers and the likes.
You could try an earth but not sure if it will help but if it does let us know.

just earthed the mounting pole, using a jump lead cable from the pole to a copper pipe in the ground, noise dropped from s5 to a s2

I have the same antenna and the noise level is not bad not as low as the silver rod but any thing below two is ok with that, I turn rf gain down on local contacts but sig is still very good, mind we live in a very low noise area I like the antenna had 3 A99s and I used a silver rod, but here the wind just wrecks them and been disabled the price is allot of money and I can not go up ladders and was helped to put it up and very happy to

Earthing the pole might help but by far the best improvement is to mount it away from the house, I did mine and noise went from s9+ to zero, when mounted on the garage 20 foot away.

Also need a RF ground. Get the A99 ground plane kit and stick a RF choke in at the antenna end of the coax.