Wednesday, 22 February 2017

New Laptop, New RFI.

After six trusty years of heavy daily use, my Samsung netbook has finally given up the ghost.

Enter a brand-new HP14-AN001NA E2 laptop, a pretty good bargain offering from Tesco here in the UK, selling for just £239.

Having hooked everything from the station up to the HP, there was no immediately-evident RFI.  I was quite pleased.  Pleased, that is, until I switched to 24MHz, a band that remains surprisingly active, despite the lack of solar excitement and the belief amongst many ops that it is a dead band.

Whilst the RFI was narrow, rather than broad band, it was quite strong at 24.917 - slap-bang in the middle of the JT65A window. 

Rather despairing of the sheer number of RFI-generating consumer goods now overwhelming the hobby, I took to adding a wire of about 2m length to the chassis of the laptop, via the shell of the HDMI socket, using a small crocodile clip.

Voila!  The chassis is detuned such that the RFI vanishes at ham frequenices.  No further action necessary!

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