Reprieve for 40

Things are not quite as dire at G4ILO's Shack as I reported a week ago. Although the noise on 20m is still as bad as it was, the use of resonant noise antennas does allow me to null it out on most of the band, though the noise (and my ability to eliminate it) does seem to change from day to day.

The noise is still bad on 80m as well. I only had limited capability on 80 anyway because the bandwidth of my short dipole is so small, centered around 3580KHz. However, it picks up the noise pretty well. It's hard to get as much noise on the noise antenna so I have not found it very easy to null it out. So I think 80m may be a goner.

Curiously, 40m does not seem to be affected much at all. I have a choice of a linear loaded dipole or the MFJ magnetic loop on 40m, though the magnetic loop outperforms the dipole so that's what I mostly use. In the evening I get an S7 noise level on either antenna, which is probably not bad for an indoor antenna in an urban location. More importantly, it's not the awful sparky crackly noise I get on 20 or 80, so it's possible to listen to the band. In fact, I can receive signals on 40m quite well. This evening on PSK31 I heard (and worked) on the magnetic loop RA4HDT who is almost in Asiatic Russia, and while I was typing this Fldigi's PSK Reporter decoded PY2RD in Brazil.