Amateur Radio: If I know I will corrupt my datastream,should I shut down my Shake when I am on the air?

Technical Support
#1

I am still working on keeping RFI out of my RS&Boom, but even at low power that seems to be very difficult due to the sensitivity of the coil in the Geophone to magnetic fields.

As much as I like my Shake, Amateur Radio is not something I’m giving up, so I would like some advice from the community. When operating, knowing that my intermittent signals (mostly CW (Morse Code) will cause intermittent traces in my output, is it more appropriate of me to shut down my Shake, or keep my stream going because I still can provide data when not transmitting?

Thanks,

Bob

#2

RFI is always something that can create this kind of problem, I have the same issue with my meteor detection station, and sometimes you just have to compromise.

However, regarding the Shake, maybe you can get an example from what this other user has done, shown in this article here: https://raspberryshake.org/amateur-radio-my-rf-shielded-raspberry-shake-vault-experiment/

I’m sure that the rest of the community will add its own experiences, if they are/were in the same situation in which you find yourself in.

1 Like
#3

Thanks Stormchaser. I understand RFI mitigation techniques fairly well after 45 years of Hamming. But some of this effect may be unavoidable at certain frequencies, so my question actually was whether I shut my Shake down when that is the case, to avoid poisoning the data stream?

What meteor detection do you do? I have a system that monitors 50.260 MHz for pings and logs them on a software called Argo.

#4

You’re welcome K2PI, no bother at all.

The data stream would be poisoned only if you were transmitting when a quake signal was received, because of the obvious spikes.

In my opinion, I would leave it on, and try to filter out whatever I can when plotting interesting parts of the datastream.

I do echoes reflections from the GRAVES radar in France (I’m in the UK), and then calculate statistics while recording images and sounds. I am on the 2m band, at 143.050MHz, with a 9 element Yagi.