Howdy, @Sealord @ChrisSmolinski and all. Long time, no me. Busy with life stuff since 2015.
'scuse the late reply. The week I dug the radios out of the closet in August this year, my apartment was flooded nine days out of two weeks, through the first week of September. Took that long for the landlord to finally hire a proper plumber, rather than trying to cheap out by having the maintenance guy try to fix it with a drain snake.
Seems to be fixed, for now, but I'll be cleaning up for the next month. The water was literally wall to wall in every room, up to an inch deep, seeping through the baseboards and out the exterior wall between the concrete foundation slab and brick mortar. Fortunately it was all relatively clean warm water, straight from the upstairs neighbor's shower, with the exception of one nasty day. Every morning. But it's infuriating that the landlord shrugged it off for two weeks before getting serious about fixing the problem. And jacked up my rent 43% earlier this year. I'm looking for another place now.
And my old wifi router quit working reliably at the same time. I was using my phone and data plan to post logs, but I wasn't spending much time browsing or checking for replies and messages. ATT sent me a free replacement modem, but it took me almost two weeks to find time to hook it up this week. And another couple of hours for ATT to set it up remotely. But it seems to be working now.
Anyway, I needed a break from cleanup chores, reruns on TV, and mostly needed to get out of the apartment. SWLing seemed like the perfect excuse to get outside. Again.
i understand what Lex is going through.. i have amateur growers, over the years, with cheap, unshielded growing ballasts..ruin my amateur hobby for years before the laws here, in this state, were modified..
good luck, hoping you find a quieter location
My battles with RFI were almost legendary on the forum and chats a decade ago. Goes with the territory for almost everyone in urban and most suburban areas since the 1990s when the FCC gave up on trying to regulate RFI-spewing imported electronics. I've actually heard worse RFI on some online SDR and remote controlled older receivers, mostly located in big cities around the world. Kinda puts things in perspective.
Unless I move back to a rural area, I have no illusions about finding a low RFI environment. Back around 2008-2012 when I was playing radio almost every day, my solution was a variety of homebrewed passive loop antennas. They were ugly, cheap and some worked remarkably well. One was dubbed the Fugloop, because it looked like nothing but a hunk of old but good quality TV grade coaxial cable wound around a closet door. It was directional at the feed point so I could aim it by opening or closing the door. I still have the materials but had to disassemble the loop years ago to prep for a building inspection. Most landlords and inspectors tend not to understand DXing. And that particular loop was gawdawful ugly. But functional and quiet.
My best loop was an outdoor stealth loop, rigged to a nearby wooden fence. It nulled out the worst source of local RFI very effectively. It was dirt cheap, using magnet wire that was such small gauge it was practically invisible; a TV balun that should not have worked on the HF band at all, but did; and TV coax run along the ground adjacent to the apartment exterior wall, shoved into the crevice between the dirt and brick wall to sort of hide it. Worked great for a couple of years until a new maintenance crew discovered it and tore it down. Fortunately it was mostly found materials -- the coax was fished out of the dumpster; the TV balun had been in my junk bin for years; and I think I paid a dollar for the magnet wire.
I haven't decided whether to keep or sell my Palstar R30 receiver, but if I keep it I'll rig up another homebrewed passive loop. I tried the Palstar this week with a random wire antenna and an RF Systems EMF antenna I got from the legendary late, great Al Fansome about 12 years ago. Great portable antenna, but can't compete with the local RFI. That's why I've mostly saved that antenna for field trips, where it's easy to toss up a tree. The Palstar is a great, very basic, no-frills receiver, but like most AM receivers for MW and HF, it needs an antenna suited to the local challenges.
So mostly I'm using my portables. The classic Sony ICF-2010 was noted for the AM sync capabilities, but what I like most about it is the directional quality of the built in telescoping whip. I just aim the tip of the whip at the noisiest RFI source (usually parking lot and apartment lights). That usually orients the whip more or less horizontally, parallel with the ground, which tends to reduce RFI anyway. It reduces signal a bit as well, but it's more pleasant to listen with minimized RFI, so even faint signals from pirates are audible.
I've tried external antennas with the Sony ICF-2010, but mostly they just increase noise. And the mini phone jack isn't really suitable for most antenna feedlines using shielded cable. I might eventually rig up a portable passive loop with a thinner shielded feedline and mini phone plug, but ... probably not. It works fine as-is with the whip.
The cleverest homebrewed antenna trick I've tried was the Villard loop (
http://www.tsf-radio.org/forum/im/145279k3mt_-_villard_anti-jamming_antenna.pdf). Here's a video demo of the Villard loop I recorded several years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Hy0RAnkBkThe video and notes below the video link to the instructions for making the loop. It's simple and cheap. All you need is stiff backing board like gatorfoam or poster board, aluminum foil, newspaper (or any large sheets of paper), and scotch tape. Google around for the Villard loop and you'll find a bunch of mentions and tips for making one.
The loop is basically just a crude capacitor that takes advantage of the capacitance effect that plagues most small portable radios. Usually that capacitance effect is a PITA for careful tuning and adjustment of whip antennas, because merely touching the radio, or even waving a hand near it or changing our body position, can affect the reception and static. But the Villard loop turns that into an asset it can use to null out the worst local static.
Unfortunately it doesn't work as well on my larger portables, which are better shielded and resistant to the capacitance effect. But it works very well with smaller portables.
My old Villard loop got torn up a few years ago, but I plan to make a larger one that will reach the 40m or so band. I suspect a Villard loop the size of a queen or king size bed could be used down to the 75-80m bands as well, although it was be unwieldy and difficult to store.
My old antenna design book had plans for a more sophisticated indoor loop, about the size of a box fan, that uses metal strips rather than delicate foil as the capacitance link, and a proper mechanical tuner to fine tune the rig. Depending on design and size those can be used down into the AM medium wave band. Basically the same effect, but a bit more involved in construction and materials cost.
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