[IRCA] Modem Noise

[Patrick Martin <mwdxer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Happy New Year everyone,

You may remember me posting about the cable modem noise I was getting after I got the high speed internet in late 2013. I fought with that for a long time. I got a little bit of it reduced, but it was still an issue. So when I would DX, I often would turn the phone/internet modem off, leaving the calls transferred to my cel phone. The other day, we had an outage. We lost the phone as well as the internet off and on. When it came back up, the phone still did not work right. I called Charter and a CSR sent a "ping" down the line and the ping did not come back correctly. They sent a tech out and in the process I mentioned the horrible harmonics coming from the modem. I showed him what I meant. In conversation, he mentioned that the old modems did have a noise issue as they were interfering with rotors, so he replaced the old phone/internet modem with a new one. When the phone and internet came back up, 50% of the noise (at least) was gone. Apparently the new one has a better power supply, less noisy. After he left I decided to try and get rid of the rest of the noise. So as an experiment, I wrapped the box in tin foil and grounded it to the coax connection. The noise was gone. Of course I could not leave it wrapped like that, as the modem has air holes in the plastic box. I had an old analog converter box, so I took the top off and places it over the modem, like a little garage as there are sides on it, leaving it open on the front and back. No difference, not until I grounded the box to the coax ground and the noise dropped down about 95%. There is still a bit on one frequency on the R8, but weak, plus I plan to get some screening and cover it with that. I think that should rid myself with the rest of the noise.

Patrick Martin
Seaside OR
KGED QSL Manager 		 	   		  
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