Powernumpty

Now that is after sales service.

Two UK stations chatting via the Swiss repeater (with Spanish and German stations) on FM

I stuck a whip up becasue I thought the Mag Loop noise level was a little better than I remembered, turns out the loop is still covering an horendous level of switchmode noise that I just can't handle with the whips.
I tried double copper shielded coax, Cat5 with baluns (worked before but this run is longer), lots of ferrite and earthing but everything I did pushed the noise around, reduced in parts but nothing made it useable.

I've got a portable spot I want to try a whip but in my short garden or close to other kit just waste of time and effort (for me).

On the power supply why not try one of the DC-DC step-down's mentioned on the forum, linear on the input side, surprisingly good.
That said here the general switch mode junk is so bad with a whip and and Kiwi on linear supplies it still picks up every switcher to the next county.
I'll stick a second kiwi online to compare "Loop to Whip" if anyone wants to see a real-time comparison.

I had some cheap Chinese hair clippers that failed. I tend to recycle as much material as I can so had the lower stainless jaws lying around.
While on Skype my eyes fell on this bit of junk and recognised that the hole size might be close to SMA and be usable for some antenna build, I then spotted that there were actually two holes....
At that point I put my dad on hold and got a Kiwi.

China is metric, most pcb component placement is imperial so the chances of these two holes in a 45mm wide bit of stainless with 5mm corners fitting the Kiwi was close to zero but.



The picture doesn't do it justice.

With the new spectrum options I spent a fair amount of last evening trying to screen dump a fleeting burst from mains networking, failed over forty times to hit it.
Today with peak capture enabled, so I didn't need to be frame accurate, I hit it third attempt.

"I'm wondering if the kiwi will be able to handle it" I'm pretty sure downconverting that range has a lot of other VHF (+FM broadcast) mixing stuff to reject so filtering is important before and after the conversion, The Kiwi is just excellent test kit showing up any failings and mixing products.
Admittedly I was using one set up for 2m so birdies in the airband may have been intentional to keep them out of the required band.

Does make me yearn for a version that does 32MHz of VHF/UHF or even a modular one, lots of rf boards are being sold for self assembly RF chains.

The LZ1AQ amp will work as a simple dipole, I think the balanced antenna may be easier to get working and I'm a real fan of CAT5/6 shieled feeds for RX antennas now.
Mine is two loops with extra vertical sections and it is more sensitive in the vertical dipole mode but also more prone to the local noise.

I also have an Aerial-51 Model 404-UL, that I keep meaning to put up somewhere (when I win the lottery) virtually invisible wire, they do heavier versions that cover 80m. The thin wire on the UL is probably not suited for permanent installation. I'm not sure if your wish to avoid the wire is visual impact or something else?

You need a nice old linear to feed a mini whip. Check it gives the required voltage at the right load, some 12V will be 18V off-load.

There will be pick up on the feedline, it needs to be halted and/or fed to ground at the most affective spot(s), that is where the fun starts.
At the very least see the outside of the coax as a likely source of trouble from common mode signals, break it up (in common mode terms) and ground it out.

I tried my old 144MHz-28MHz transverter and was OK on some parts of the airband, not very clean though.
Perhaps you could send an enquiry to transverters-store.com, they seem good value even though you would be using just the RX side.
I looked for other downconverters and maybe due to RTL SDR @£10 world there is very little call for it so prices reflect the specialised nature.

You could try a reflector behind it. I don't think I'd get much here facing west but there could be some other interference desensing it.
I'd also carefully check the voltage at the SMA pins 3.3V.

Is there any way you could actually put the puck outside (away from other kit) even if you have to remove the HF antenna?
To me it would be good to test it where it should work before assuming there is some fault.