[600MRG] XSH/20

[Rudy Severns]

Like Neil, I've been dealing with our typical fall storms and conducting 
extensive wind tunnel testing of my antennas!  In addition, after several 
inches of rain my soil conductivity has increased nicely and my transmit 
antenna tuning seems to have settled down.

My power was out for seven hours last evening.  That's not a serious problem 
for us since we have a diesel generator unit which keeps everything going 
which makes the XYL very happy but the outage, which was fairly wide spread, 
provided a great opportunity to see if any of my local noise disappeared. 
Sure enough things quieted down very nicely.  I need to schedule more 
outages!  I was also happy to see that the generator didn't create any QRN 
on it's own.

However, the most annoying QRN source was still there indicating it was from 
further away.  When viewed on a waterfall I see a 4-5 "jail bars" spaced 
exactly 250 Hz.  Not 240 Hz as you might expect from a rectified line 
harmonic but 250 Hz.  The signal is centered close to 475 kHz although it 
drifts up and down a kHz or so.  This noise is there 24/7 unlike my local 
industrial noise which very politely stops for evenings and weekends.  Does 
anyone have an idea what kind of machine uses 250 Hz modulation?  This 
source is a limiting factor for receiving WSPR signals as one of the bars 
frequently lies directly on top of a WSPR carrier.

Things are quieting down so I expect to be up this evening.

73, Rudy