Correction L.C., I get up at 4:15am every Saturday morning after getting home at 12:45pm Friday night. I'd be lucky to even get an hour & a half sleep. I control all the refrigeration for a major food company plant. I work 2nd shift, but expected to do a turnaround come early Saturday mornings. It is our down day to do repairs, etc.
This Monday we had no production, but I had to still come in early again Monday morning just for that same reason. But I got home at 3pm Monday just in time to do some Dxing. And let me tell ya, the skip was rampant all the way from 3pm to about 8pm before it all settled down.
I was hearing guys from all over clear as a bell & pushing 9dbs to boot. Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Canada, New York, Georgia, but the majority of the skip was coming in from the Carolinas & Florida down by the keys. To excite my (sacred free evening), I heard a woman from the Carolinas pushing 9db over my radio. I thought I'd just try breaking in and seeing if she would answer. Well, the conditions must have been just right because not only did she respond to my break, she said I was pushing a good 9db also into her radio. Needless to say, it was a very exciting moment. Something I have not experienced in 34 years.
Also, yesterday evening, I was getting this different noise all over my 40 channels, it was like a pulsating noise combined with a wild frequency buzzing noise. I thought my evening was ruined. At first I thought it was the woman next door again running something. But this noise sounded like something electronic and kept transmitting every 2 seconds. After 2 hours, it went away. I figured it must have been someone parked down the block with some kind of car alarm. For the life of me, I never heard this kind of noise ever since I have had my Solarcon up & running.
It was almost like a star wars light Sabre noise, but with a pulsation.
So I'm anxiously awaiting for my stuff to come. Getting back to the separate ground rod I have next to the house ground, I tried putting my Mast ground on it again. To my surprise, (and this has not happened before), I had a horrible mains noise in the kitchen & coming into my mains circuit box. A definate ground loop if you ask me. I confirmed this with my AM transistor radio with my father present.
As soon as I disconnected the Mast ground from this separate ground rod I have, the noise disappeared. I then proceeded to hook it up to the mains neutral (house ground) that was next to my separate ground rod that I had. The so called House ground from the meter box. A tiny bit of mains noise still was eminent, but it was really minute. So the Mast ground is grounded to the house ground as you have stated for me to do. Why I did not have this ground loop before I will never know. But let me assure you, I did not have it before when it was hooked up to my separate ground before.
Mighty strange, but hey, live & learn. It's on the house ground now as L.C. has told me before to do. But the loop was not there before. The damn est thing. Well, it's working ok now with the mast on the house ground, but the original problem noise, the same noise Maxmobile43 has, is still rampant through all my 40 channels. There are some channels that are fairly quieter, but only a few. The most noisiest of channels remain to be 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, with 5, 6, & 7 being the noisiest with this crackling 60 Hz hum.
Well, as soon as my new cable, the PVC & delrin rod are here, I will commence on taking the antenna back down. Well, I had one question for you guys, I noticed Dacron was being used for guy wires now. Well, you know me, I used regular steel guy wires with turnbuckles and aircraft crimped lead compression fittings for the cable ends. I was able to get away with just 3 guy wires. The mast & antenna are fairly secured tightly, it is level as well.
I heard this could be a problem, perhaps I'm radiating onto these steel guy wires? should I get Dacron instead? I was going to anyways, but thought I'd just throw it out there. If there's a thread in here about this, (And I'm sure there is), I will find it & please don't bother to respond as I will find it later & see what others are doing.
Later for now,
James
