Inverter HF interference ?

Hi

I had an 800W modified square wave 12 to 240 V inverter in the Patrol and it caused significant interferance to my HF.
I changed it to another brand & still had the problem.
I changed it for a 1000W Pure Sine Wave - NO interference.
This was with 2 different brand HF's as well.

They might - so might the sine wave ones.

Because RF/electrical "noise" and it's propagation is such a complex area it's impossible to be more definitive. My assumption would be that square/tri wave inverters would be more likely to cause problems but even that would depend upon a myriad of variables.

A friend of mine happily runs his Amateur HF set off his inverter and is happy with it but I have heard him make contacts where the chap at the other end said he could hear inverter whine. I prefer to run mine from a battery.

At the very least any electrical/electronic equipment which causes rapid current change and is operating in the immediate vicinity of a radio will, most likely, degrade the Rx ability of the radio.

Take a portable radio to the place you will be buying the inverter from and tune it to a quiet section of the MW band then switch the inverter on and ensure it is powering a load and see what happens with the radio? Not a definitive test but cheaper than a broad band spectrum analyser :)

Mike Harding

mike_harding@fastmail.fm

Hi Footloose
I have an inverter in the Ute which runs the laptop (moving map) and the battery recharging for phone etc, it is a 300w modified sinewave from Radio Parts and it causes no interferance to the HF radio (Barrett). The Danfoss compressor on the fridge is the biggest noise problem for the HF, if anyone knows how to fix it, please post.
Ray