IARU Championship 2011 or shooting yourself in the foot

Camping in the Adirondacks this year, so I had the choice of going QRP with my Yaesu FT-817 and Transworld antenna or low power with my Icom 706MKIIG, same antenna. Well, after setting up on Friday afternoon, I found that I had lots of noise, S9 and above... Since we were near the office, pool etc. I figured out they had some RFI problems inherent to the mechanical parts of the pool, refrigerators and what not. And campgrounds are known to have electrical problems anyhow. Not much I could do about it, certainly not saving my 24-hours contest...

So I opt for maximum power, set up the Icom 706MKIIG as my station and heard almost nothing but noise on all bands, 40m-10m, covering most of the band... I did manage a few DX contacts, in the 5000 miles range, something that would send he whooping and hollering on 5 watts, but less so on 100 watts. Sure, I'm just operating portable, with a good antenna, but still a compromise one, so I'm not unhappy, but I was hoping for better.

I even tried my FT-817, battery powered, outside the rig with my Alexloop antenna, one that has a directional pattern, but even with this, I could not null the noise. Made a few QRP contacts anyhow...

I had planned on staying up late at night, to improve on my score as much as possible, but conditions seemed so bad that I figured out it is not worth losing sleep over, so I went to bed.

I woke up in the morning, walked the dogs, all six of them are with us in the RV and then it dawned on me. I was using a spare cell phone/iPod charger, the same I used at home, but at home, I discovered its power supply made all kind of noise so I replaced it, this one, a spare, still had the original power supply. I turned the Icom on, to be greeted by S9 noise. I unplugged the sucker power supply and the noise was GONE! Well S2-3 is quite acceptable in a campground! And parts of the 20m band were totally quiet! Ugh! I feel so stupid. A less than $5.00 piece of Chinese crap robbed me of a beautiful day's contest!

When I get back home, I'll give this PS the 10lbs hammer test, meaning what happens to it when pounded by said hammer...

As for hunting the noise down, the RV is 30' long, and that makes it hard to pinpoint the noise. In addition, I have power lines overhead, the power receptacle and the stupid PS were within feet of each other so with only an HT, I don't think I could have zeroed on the real culprit, but I did not try, as I assumed wrongly tht the noise came from the campground...


So here is my score:







At least I participated!