Tidying up the whole shack make life easier to reach stuff but did not completely cure one issue, that of RF flying about the place and getting into things where it was not wanted.
I tried 10m this morning and two things happened. First, it set off the house alarm. Second, wsjt-x would not hold a tx cycle or tuning. The autotune was happy but that acts quickly. Using wsjt-x’s tuning for a few seconds, or transmitting a CQ and the FT450D would tx, then off, then try again etc. This has happened before.
First off, yes there is RF in the shack and it’s due to the rather naff antenna wire in the loft. I need to live with that until I get some wire in the air outside. And yes, I’ve been saying that for ages! But before it was really down to the mass of cables all entwined and those have been completely tidied up now. So I was rather annoyed that the same issue has returned.
And then I discovered that my attempts to dust round the desk had moved the serial cable between the FT450D and the Signalink and it was now laid across the antenna cable. Moving it cured the issue. For some reason when I fitted ferrites to that cable I only put one at the Signalink end, not the rig end. Fixed that too.
Some leads are still too long though. No sense really in tidying the place up but leaving long leads, so some soldering is planned…