I spent some time today tracking down RFI in my truck that appears when I’m listening to 6-80 meters. I re-mounted my HF antenna, fixed some annoying problems and installed a line noise filter. The good news is, the line filter killed the majority of the noise I get when the truck ignition is in accessory mode. I still get quite a bit of noise when the igntion is on. I poked around using my HT has a noise meter and found a bit of RFI around my exhaust, radiator fan, and under the dash. Unfortunately the most interference is where my radios are mounted — this means they’re mounted in the worst possible spot. I need to dig out the Chilton manual to see just what is installed under there.
In the meantime, I brought the 857 inside and hooked to the dipole draped out on my balcony. I bought a cheap auto tuner today so I could dink around with different antenna. I discovered a few neat undesired side effects. In order to tune, the tuner requires a brief Tx (it has a cable attached to the 857 to do this for me). The first time I hit it, I forgot the 857 was set to output 100 W of power. The speakers on my cheap stereo went nuts! Later, I changed the RF output to 5 W. This time when I tried to tune for 40 meters, I popped every GCFI recepticle in my apartment at once. So awesome.
Scarlett Johansson was on SNL last night, playing Ivanka Trump in a skit! So happy, that’s like 4x the hotness in one sitting!
