Radion Noise Solved

[rcwagner]

Recently I have been experiencing radio noise in both my G430W and Kx165.  The G430W would break squelch so I would hear  "white noise" in the headset.  The KX165 would squelch out transmissions I should be hearing.  I got to enjoy this on a long round trip cross country from Washington to Texas.  Very irritating to me and my passenger.  I was ready to take my M20J to the radio shop and open my check book.

In a phone conversation with an experienced shop, they instructed me to go fly and start turning electrical loads off to see if the RF noise can be isolated.  It worked.  The culprit turned out to be a USB power adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter for powering my Ipad.  After a little research about this, it seems to be a common problem with USB Power adapters.  Whew, dodged that one!  

Anyone know of a USB Power Adapter for and Ipad that doesn't create RF noise?

[MB65E]

Garmin makes a handy dual USB power cord I use for a 496. I can charge 2 other devices with out noise. 
-Matt

[Ragsf15e]

You can also try a couple of the cheap Amazon cigarette lighter usb chargers.  I have used two different ones with no issues, but clearly some of them cause issues.  Make sure you get the proper amperage rating for each usb socket or your iPad won’t be charging when on.

[EricJ]

There's a long thread here, with an update I did a year ago (second to the last post at the moment):

Bottom line:  even expensive ones can be noisy and even cheap ones can be really quiet.   If you find a noisy one, throw it out and replace it with one that's not noisy.   These things are commodities and noisy ones just seem to be random and not necessarily correlated to a particular type.   The implementations change from time to time since the volumes are so high, so even year-old research is probably getting stale.

Latest report copied here for convenience:

http://ericjacobsen.org/Files/USB_Power_Supply_RF_analysis_3.pdf

[rcwagner]

Today I tried an Apple iPhone Charge adapter that has both the iPhone and Ipad outlets.  Charges the iPad and does not create radio noise.

 

 

 

 

[carusoam]

Great follow-up RCW!

Go MS!

-a-

[LANCECASPER]

10 hours ago, rcwagner said:

Today I tried an Apple iPhone Charge adapter that has both the iPhone and Ipad outlets.  Charges the iPad and does not create radio noise.

I don't think Apple makes a cigarette lighter power adaptor, but they do sell other brands on their website, which they've, no doubt, tested. Which one did you get?

[0TreeLemur]

On 4/1/2021 at 1:55 PM, EricJ said:

There's a long thread here, with an update I did a year ago (second to the last post at the moment):

Bottom line:  even expensive ones can be noisy and even cheap ones can be really quiet.   If you find a noisy one, throw it out and replace it with one that's not noisy.   These things are commodities and noisy ones just seem to be random and not necessarily correlated to a particular type.   The implementations change from time to time since the volumes are so high, so even year-old research is probably getting stale.

Latest report copied here for convenience:

http://ericjacobsen.org/Files/USB_Power_Supply_RF_analysis_3.pdf

If we had a MS FAQ- this would be a great entry in the Avionics section!