Terry I am using a hy-gain vertical (6BTV) and also have a random length of wire. Both have given me contacts in the US and decent DX - 4X, XE, LU, TI2, TG, etc. It sounds to me like you are picking up a lot of just plain old "line" noise, that is, dimmers, florescent lights and the cursed switching power supply used in most PCs.
My wire is a length of RG-58, about 50 feet, running to the edge of the house at ground level, there the shield is grounded to an 8 foot ground rod. For static drain I have a 100 uh inductor across the center and ground at this point, like is added on the KPA-100 mod. I then took 70 ft of copper wire, Radio Shack SWL antenna wire, went straight up the house to the peak (about 18 feet) and then over to the highest tree that I could get a rock through one of the branches (about 40 feet high and 40 feet away. The wire is not tight and sort of makes a sagging arch about like a quarter circle. But it works almost as good as the Hy-Gain and the K2 has no problem tuning it on any band. WWV comes through on 15 at 10 to 20 over in the late afternoon early evenings. You might want to make sure that you have set L34 at its optimum point as the noise will affect the AGC in addition to giving you extra noise. A technique I stumbled on follows. Follow the instructions for "I.F. Amplifier Alignment." When you get to the last step plug the PC sound card into the Speaker Jack (not Headphone as it attenuates some high frequencies). You will notice some noise spread across the Spectrogram display. Make sure the XFIL is set for FL-1 OP-1. Now continue to adjust L34 for a compromise of the lowest displayed noise and the highest level of the tone. You will find a point where the noise is almost non existent. If you don't have Spectrogram just about any PSK program will also work - I found the waterfall mode gave a sort of "Sonar" display that was obvious when all of the "grass" (noise) was gone. Follow the instructions for setting the AGC (do that after above even if you thought it was set properly. Even though I had adjusted this to what I thought was the best by "ear," after using this method and then re-adjusting the ARC threshold. I was amazed at the difference in sensitivity and audio level. Maybe this is one of the problems/reasons you have "low output volume," "high noise," or "low gain." Rich KE0X _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
