Exercise Equipment RFI Kits

Store / Exercise Equipment RFI Kits

Does the operation of a treadmill or your exercise equipment wipe out your radio receiver reception? We have heard cases where the treadmill from a neighbor’s house wiped out the ham radio receiver reception from 2-30 Mhz! The treadmill source was finally isolated to a variable speed motor power supply that was injecting RFI into the AC wiring of the house and the AC wiring was acting as a transmitting antenna broadcasting the signal to the entire neighborhood. The case was difficult to track down since the broadband RFI interference only occurred at 7-8 pm each nite when the neighbor used the treadmill. As with all RFI cases the sequence is similar: Find the Source, Choke the Path, Protect the Victim.

Once the source was identified, a simple solution was to choke off the transmitting antenna with a AC line choke shown below which eliminated the interference problem to the ham receiver:

Testimonials

F400-31 AC Power Cord Choke completely cured the RFI problem I had with my wife’s treadmill. Now I can hear the weak signals!

73,

Jim K4AXF

Icom IC-725

Grottoes, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

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AC Cable Noise Filter for Large Plugs - 3" ID

SKU ACCF-3

$39.95

AC Cable Noise Filter for Standard 120VAC Plugs - 1.4" ID

SKU ACCF-1.4

$12.95

AC Power Cord Choke + Power Cord- 120VAC RFI Range: 1-30 MHz, -28 dB Noise Reduction, 15 Amp

SKU AC-CHOKE-6

$19.95

Wall Wart switching DC power supplies that plug into the AC power line plug and provide DC power to laptops, routers, battery chargers, cell phone chargers, etc are a known source of broadband RFI (a.k.a dirty electricity) that effects many electrical devices including computers, radio receivers, HDTV systems, etc. In many cases this extra RFI noise effects computer I/O speeds since they have to error correct the information packets many more times due to the noise interference causing packet errors. A ferrite ring can often increase data throughput by reducing the error correction to normal rates.

A simple ferrite ring filter on the DC power line can help suppress the RFI noise affecting the victim device or keep the DC power cord from acting as an antenna and radiating RFI into other victim devices. This kit is also useful on laptop computer supplies, routers, cable modems, wireless phone charges, etc.

RFI WW Installation 300x288 - Wall Wart RFI Noise Filter

Installation is quick and easy: Just wrap the DC power cord through the center of the ring filter as many times as you can and reinstall. For best results with long DC power lines, use one at the ring filter at the wall wart end (to prevent the wall wart power supply from using the DC line as an antenna) and another at the DC plug end (to prevent the electronics in the powered device from using the DC power cord as an antenna). Typical installation is shown below:

The filter suppresses RFI in from .1-100 MHz. Inside diameter is 3/4 inch/19 mm.

Since most households and office environments have multiple wall warts we offer the Wall Wart RFI Filter kit in bulk quantity packages.

Known RFI Generators include Roku/Sling-TV power adapter - Interference heard in the AM broadcast band
 and harmonics.
Also many ethernet Cable/DSL modems, cell phone chargers, computer power adapters have the same issue:
using the AC or DC side of the power supply as a radiating antenna.

RFI solution is to use a linear power supply, change adapters or wall wart ferrite filters