Folks, I'm somewhat on the fence regarding resolution to RFI I have thanks to AMTRAK and some RFI coming to the south of me.
I live at the end of a dead end. There is a salt marsh behind me & 1 mile + to the next house. AMTRAK is 100' to the north of me & it's one mile + from that to the next house. There is one house to the east of me & another mile + to the next house. To the south there are houses & RFI. AMTRAK's arcing kills me at Gray line thanks to the commuter rush at the same time. I have too much RFI to the south of me and there's noise from the cable lines that I can't get them to fix. Here's what it is like most every Gray line when it's cold or damp in the fall/winter. This was 3C1L on TB and you can barely see him popping in two times in the below photo, only when the arcing stops for a few seconds. In those rare times he was Q5 but only for a few seconds and I then couldn't hear him. I had turned all lights off hoping that might help (it didn't) Photos of my SVGA screen with the P3: http://doctorgary.net/rfi-a.jpg About an hour later it dried out a bit and the commuter trains had mostly finished so the RFI was less and luckily he was still working the pileup & his signal was clear. Now that I could hear him Q5, I proceeded to call him and eventually did make the Q. On the nights the interference lasts, I miss most everything that is due to Gray line propagation. This was what it was like when the arcing lightened up. http://doctorgary.net/rfi-b.jpg This is what I have to deal with every night & with every SR & SS, kills me in the 160M contests too. I use a HI-Z 8 and a triangular and while they are stellar and a must have for me, they don't remove this interference even though they have great nulling abilities. I've been leaning towards one of the NCC units, either the NCC-1 or the NCC-2. It looks like one of the big selling features of the NCC-2 is the inclusion of the RTR-1 internally which is a receive antenna interface & which I don't need with either the K3s or my backup K3. Other than this feature, is there any real difference between the function or quality between the NCC-1 vs NCC-2? They've raised the price of the NCC-2 to where I'm not likely to buy it and will wait till one comes up for sale in the used market. If the NCC-1 is just as good, then I'll go that route & get a NOS or good used one. Thoughts on whether the NCC-2 is any real benefit to me VS the NCC-1? 73, Gary KA1J _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
