I have an off center fed antenna about 125 feet long and fed with a 4:1
balun . Then about 75 feet of rg-8x comes off at about a 45 deg angle to
the house . It is then tuned with an MFJ tuner. Lately the noise jumped to
about s9 or greater. I talk with some friends about 100 miles away. They
will have an s9 + signal but are difficult to copy because of the noise. I
found out that if I unscrew the coax from the back of the rig and just have
the cneter conductor in , the noise will drop to almost an s-1 or s-2 but
the received signals on 80 meters seem to be almost the same, still over
s-9. I do hook up the shield to transmitt. The tuning does not seem to be
any differant now than it was several months ago when I did not have the
noise.. Any ideas on why the noise would be less but the desired signals
seem to be about the same.