Sunday 21 May 2017

MFJ-1026 Noise Canceller Tests At VA7MM

courtesy: www.mfjenterprises.com/

Mark, VA7MM, has been testing out his newly-acquired MFJ-1026 Noise Canceller and has provided several videos of the noise canceller in action.


Like so many other hams, Mark's suburban location has seen a gradually rising noise floor and the noise heard in this video is from an off-site location within his local neighbourhood, located about 400m away.

The noise canceller requires a separate 'noise antenna' in order to cancel any noise on the main receiving antenna and for all of the tests shown below, Mark's noise antenna was a Cushcraft R-7 vertical while using an Icom IC-7600 transceiver for listening.

Test 1 shows the noise canceller being used while listening to a broadcast station on 6.0 MHz:


Test 2 shows the canceller's effect on raw noise while viewing in Spectran:


Test 3 shows the canceller's effect on a 40m CW signal:


Test 4 shows the effect of just the IC-7600's noise blanker on the offending noise:


Mark's comments:

Living in the noise cloud one must resort to special measures to use affected portions of spectrum. I recently purchased an MFJ-1026 noise canceller and have been testing the unit and have attached videos demonstrating the unit’s performance. You will see examples of raw noise, SW broadcast and 40 m CW signals with the unit being switched in and out. Also for comparison is the noise blanker in the IC-7600 failing to eliminate the same noise. 
 
Conclusions:
 
- the unit is able to eliminate noise in most instances when adjusted properly
 
- the noise sense antenna is critical and several different switchable noise sense antennas may be required for good performance
 
- setting up on AM mode with Spectran helps with fine adjustment
- it outperforms the radio’s noise blanker in all cases tested

With proper tuning and set up, it looks like the MFJ-1026 can make a worthwhile improvement in unwanted noise reduction.  Mark will also be testing and comparing a Timewave ANC-4 Noise Canceller with the MFJ and any videos received will be published here.

1 comment:

Steve McDonald said...

From VE7CA, Markus:

I just noted your recent blog about Mark’s observation with the MFJ noise canceller. Several years ago I did a comparison between the Re: MFJ and Timewave cancellers. I made a relay switching system so I could instantly switch between the two units to see if one was better than the other. I found them both equal in performance. As Mark mentioned it is very helpful to have more than one noise antenna. I made a special switching box to switch between three noise antenna’s and they are all important depending which band I am trying to eliminate noise issues. I wrote a little blurb on my web site under Antennas -160M page here:

http://www.ve7ca.net/Ant160.htm