On Fri, 19 Nov 2010 13:46:32 -0500, Bob wrote:

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

Hi Bob,

I clipped all of your questions because they can all be answered in a
word:

Y E S

Now we can move on to "thoughts."

There are two modes for noise entry: radiation and conduction.

Radiation comes from the source "over the air."

Conduction comes from the source "through wire."

The Y E S answer snubs both at the source by putting a lot of Z in
line with the generator thus reducing its drive for either mode.
However, this is sometimes not enough and that is generally where the
focus on conduction can pay off.

Now, when I said noise can come in "through wire," think of all the
wire that interconnects your listening station, and:
Does that wire have a path to a noise source?

Break that path.

Unfortunately, the path can be obscure. One such blind spot that
trips many up is the power lead, and the 19th century network called
house wiring. One thing about this noise network is that it often
follows a hub and spoke style of design. If your receiving station
shares a breaker with the noise generator, that noise current is being
siphoned into your receiver. What drives most folks nuts about trying
to solve that is when they add a "ground" to their rig, the noise gets
worse! To some degree this is called a ground loop.

Try moving your power plug to another socket in another room (which,
presumably, is on a different breaker). A method for diagnosing where
your problem is coming from is to use a portable radio as a noise
detector (much as you would use a metal detector at the beach).
Another method is the throw breakers one at a time and note if some
noise abruptly vanishes. You will have then isolated your problem to
a noise network branch.

This should keep you from winding chokes for a day or two.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC