2018-09-14, 04:10
So I noticed some threads about interference on Blue were moved to forums I can't access, so I hope i'm not doing this wrong. (I tried to navigate from the Member area to the forum to link my account as a Participant but it doesn't seem to have worked... Tried a few times..)
I got my Blue board finished yesterday (with the LTC filter chips on each channel, and so far two ferrite rods at 90 degrees horizontal; and the amplifier attached tot he H-field port via about 1m of Cat5e cable.)
Results have not been so good. The unit has been going into Interference Mode (Burst) quite quite often and the stroke level compared to the station mean is very low. (My station is 2284, by the way.)
I did un-knot the knots on the ferrite rod leads, because I was worried this may somehow mess with the signal (I know now that that's unlikely to be the case and was probably a bad idea as it weakened the wire; at least the ferrite rods are not too rare right now) - but I did connect the knotted leads to + on channels A and B.
I did NOT solder the jumper pads on channels A and B on the back of the H-field amp as I interpreted this as needing to be done for loop antennas only. I don't know if I read this wrong.
Anyhow, performance has not been good. In automatic mode the system would just go into burst interference mode quite a bit. In Manual, with default settings, less so, but I presume this isn't ideal in terms of gain being adjusted.
I've tried to figure out what's causing the interference. At first I was worried that I soldered on one of the filter chips wrong (The orientation is correct, i'm sure of, but maybe there was a bridge or I heated one of the chips too much - ) but for sure the interference signal stops the second I disconnect the H-field antenna.
(I do not currently have E-field set up but I will shortly.)
Anyhow, it seems that if I have the H-field antenna a certain level low to the ground, the burst mode interference begins; if I elevate it too much, the burst mode interference begins as well. For now I have it at a 'medium point' where it doesn't seem to detect this interference, (which honestly is about 5 feet off the ground) - but it seems that detection is very low.
Is there anything obvious here I'm doing wrong? If the ferrite rod leads come close to eachother in my (pvc pipe) H-field frame, is that going to cause a problem? Did I need to solder the jumper pads? Is the knot anything more than an indicator?
Sorry for all the questions, I spent a very long time waiting to become part of the Blitzortung project so I am very motivated to get my station working well... just of course there is going to be a learning curve here.
Thanks,
Michi
I got my Blue board finished yesterday (with the LTC filter chips on each channel, and so far two ferrite rods at 90 degrees horizontal; and the amplifier attached tot he H-field port via about 1m of Cat5e cable.)
Results have not been so good. The unit has been going into Interference Mode (Burst) quite quite often and the stroke level compared to the station mean is very low. (My station is 2284, by the way.)
I did un-knot the knots on the ferrite rod leads, because I was worried this may somehow mess with the signal (I know now that that's unlikely to be the case and was probably a bad idea as it weakened the wire; at least the ferrite rods are not too rare right now) - but I did connect the knotted leads to + on channels A and B.
I did NOT solder the jumper pads on channels A and B on the back of the H-field amp as I interpreted this as needing to be done for loop antennas only. I don't know if I read this wrong.
Anyhow, performance has not been good. In automatic mode the system would just go into burst interference mode quite a bit. In Manual, with default settings, less so, but I presume this isn't ideal in terms of gain being adjusted.
I've tried to figure out what's causing the interference. At first I was worried that I soldered on one of the filter chips wrong (The orientation is correct, i'm sure of, but maybe there was a bridge or I heated one of the chips too much - ) but for sure the interference signal stops the second I disconnect the H-field antenna.
(I do not currently have E-field set up but I will shortly.)
Anyhow, it seems that if I have the H-field antenna a certain level low to the ground, the burst mode interference begins; if I elevate it too much, the burst mode interference begins as well. For now I have it at a 'medium point' where it doesn't seem to detect this interference, (which honestly is about 5 feet off the ground) - but it seems that detection is very low.
Is there anything obvious here I'm doing wrong? If the ferrite rod leads come close to eachother in my (pvc pipe) H-field frame, is that going to cause a problem? Did I need to solder the jumper pads? Is the knot anything more than an indicator?
Sorry for all the questions, I spent a very long time waiting to become part of the Blitzortung project so I am very motivated to get my station working well... just of course there is going to be a learning curve here.
Thanks,
Michi