Yes, there is a way. The main source of noise from the fan is related backpressure. The intake opening does not have enough area to draw in the amount of air being pulled by the fan. If you enlarge the opening, the noise will decrease significantly.
What I did was remove the front cover and using a ruler, created (traced) an octagon using the outside tangent points on the little circles that make up the air intake vent. Using a Dremel tool with a mettle cutting wheel, I cut out the octagon. The fan dust cover fits over the newly enlarged hole so you can't see it. If you want, you can buy silicon rubber fan gaskets that will isolate the fan from the metal faceplate further reducing noise from induced vibrations of the front cover. There have been some discussions of the frequency stability of the radio if you vary the fan on/off or reduce the speed by a thermostatic voltage controller. I use the latter and do not seem to have any frequency drift. BTW, the fan in the SDR has the lowest noise rating of any fan I could find in that format (80x15mm) -Tim --- Integrated Technical Services "You can't close the door when the walls cave in" --Robert Hunter -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John L Merrill Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 8:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Flexradio] SDR1000 fan I suppose this may have been beat to death before, but does anyone have a good solution to make the fan quieter or use a quieter fan? Maybe there is a good way to turn it off in receive, but then again maybe the fan is needed in receive. Any comments would be appreciated. 73, John N1JM _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com
