Fluorescent lights in my garage are causing LOTS of noise in my old readios. Can you suggest a solution?

:Fluorescent lights in my garage are causing LOTS of noise in my old readios. Can you suggest a solution?

RCWade

A hammer?

Bud

That's probably the best answer. Anyone not having interference from fluorescent lights is probably not trying to listening to weak AM stations.

You can add a line filter at the lamp. If you have long open fluorescent tubes in metal frames be sure the frame is grounded.

The glass portion of the lamps will also cause interference. Might consider covering the lamps with grounded metal screen?

Other than that turning off the light would be the best solution.

Norm

::Fluorescent lights in my garage are causing LOTS of noise in my old readios. Can you suggest a solution?
:
:RCWade
:
:A hammer?

You can build your own filters. Go to Radio Shack and get two 100 uH (I think it's uH, though it could be mH) chokes. They are about $1 each. Also purchase 4 .01 MFD 500 WVDC capacitors.

Wire the chokes on each side of the fluorescent line cord (excluding the ground wire, or you can try a 3rd one on the ground wire, too, if you want), inside of the fluorescent casing. When you are finished, wrap well with tape so that no shorts can occur. However, prior to this, experiment with the capacitors. Wire one between the chokes on the fluorescent side, and then try it with one on the line cord side. Then try it on both sides. You can also try two wired in series, either on the fluorescent side, or on the line cord side, or both, with the junction connected to the fluorescent casing. The standard is with them on both sides, with the junctions tied to the chassis. However, I have had better results, in radios at least, with the capacitors on the device side only, and not on the line cord side. Connecting the junction to the chassis may or may not help, too.

Thomas

A lot of the RF is radiated through the glass tube itself, no amount of line filtering will take care of that. A combination of filtering and screening will help, best bet is to turn them off.

Dave

:A lot of the RF is radiated through the glass tube itself, no amount of line filtering will take care of that. A combination of filtering and screening will help, best bet is to turn them off.
:
:Dave

Try running a long antenna perpendicular to your lights. We had this trouble with an off-the-air monitor at a radio station, and it took an outside antenna plus a filter on each light to get the noise out. This really is something you must fix by trial and error, as one man's cure may not work at all for another.

Lewis
Lewis