Howyadoin,
I recently installed a home theater rig, using 14 gauge unshielded wire to the speakers. There’s a guy up the hill from me with a big honkin’ CB antenna, and I now get this guy’s inane chatter on top of my audio. Any ideas on how to filter out this jibber-jabber?
Thanks!
-Rav
Possible solutions.
1: Ask the FCC if they can check his RF output. It’s not unusual for guys like this to be operating way over allowable output levels. About 20 years ago in my previous life as a Radio Shack manager many of these CB base station jockeys buying the huge antennas would brag about how over spec their systems were.
2: Put a twist in the speaker wire (if possible) every few inches or so. If an RF maven or EE knows the most appropriate twist ratio (or if this is even an effective solution for CB frequency interference) please chime in.
3: It might not be the speaker wire. If his signal is strong enough he might possibly be swamping your pre-amp tuner stage or related components. Short of a metal box enclosure for your receiver I have no solution for this.
Go here http://www.Palomar-Engineers.com/ and read about the ferrite toroids you can put on your speaker wires to eliminate “common mode” RFI. Different “mixes” are used depending on the frequency you wish to block.
After obtaining the correct toroids, wind the speaker wires around and through the toroids as many times as possible. Arrange it so the torioids are as close as possible to the speaker terminals on the stereo set.
Good luck!
Do you here his chatter with you stereo turned off? If not, it isn’t the speaker cables picking it up.
I am sure it is getting in at the reciever/amp area.
Cheap interconnect between components would be much more likely source.
Bottom line is this, he is probably illegally using a ham linear amp with a CB… quite illegal. The FCC would be happy to take care of that problem.