I just had to replace my Boltek antenna from it being defective. It was in my attic for several years and I noticed a crack which was causing noise 24/7. Anyway, a new one has been installed in a different location, outdoors, on top of my push up pole in a PVC enclosure. The approximate height is 36 feet and there is very little sway since guy wires secure the pole. I used a 100' cat6 shielded cable to feed into the house, part of which goes underground through schedule 40 conduit. Once in the house I reattached it to the existing 50 foot cable using a standard coupler which was purchased at CompUsa. Total cable length 150 feet. The existing cable was a cat 5 so I basically married a cat 6 and 5 together. I didn't think this would be any problem so I went with it.
During the day, the noise count will reach as high as 3800/min sporadically with the sound settings set at 10ms. This is roughly a 60hz cycle that it is picking up. The noise starts at approximately 10pm and cycles on and off throughout the day until about 4pm with no real pattern. Totally random. The squelch has to be increased to 11 or 12 just to eliminate the noise but if I left it that high my antenna would be useless. The noise sensitivity does not seem to have any effect when set for high or very high.
About a week ago, I started troubleshooting potential problems in my own home. I run two servers, one for the weather and the other for lightning. Both have 1500 UPS's for battery backup. After turning everything off in my own home I then decided to kill the main breaker to the house during the noise event. The problem disappeared while it was running on ups power only. I then tripped all the breakers except the breaker to the servers. Power was reapplied to the main and the noise event occurred again. I did hear a small amount of buzzing in the breaker feeding the servers which was noticeable during the event. I replaced the breaker and the noise did improve a little bit.
I then tried to distribute the load a little bit by applying power to different outlets but no difference has been noticed at this time. I've also tried swapping ups's and this has not changed anything.
So am I looking at this in the wrong direction or do I need to consider other sources? I never had this problem when my Boltek was in my attic. Oh, I forgot to mention, the PC was replaced also. Ideas? Suggestions?
I have been graphing the noise for troubleshooting and it can be viewed here if anybody is interested. Image updated every 2 minutes.
http://www.capeweather.com/florida-lightning.htmlThanks.......