Something I've wondered about is how does the
MFJ-1026 differentiate between noise and signal. I mean, you set up a reference antenna for the noise, but nothing prevents that reference antenna from also receiving signal (just like your main antenna receives signal and noise). So if the 1026 cancels noise, how then does it not also cancel the signal?
Indeed, that seems to be what's happening for me. See
my other post here on this forum for the full background. Before I learned that it's probably common mode I ordered an MFJ-1026. The MFJ-1026 arrived today so I set it up and tried it.
The noise reference antenna is an original Ukrainian active Mini Whip from the
transverters-store.com. Although the MiniWhip instructions say to ground the PCB at the mast, if I do that then the antenna has no noise, so I leave off the PCB to mast ground wire so that it is noisy like my signal antenna. The signal antenna is an
AlphaAntenna 10-160m HF JPole Sr.
Tonight the noise was only about S7 (reduced as a result of
a pair of air chokes I kludged). I am able to adjust the 1026 to cancel the noise; how about that, it works! Or does it? Because although it cut out the white noise, it seems like it's blanking the signal, too, because the signal doesn't appear to be any stronger without the noise. Or am I doing it wrong? Or maybe the 1026 doesn't work on this type of noise? You can watch and listen to the results in
this video here. I've already adjusted the 1026; what I'm doing in the video is turning the power on and off so you can see the effect of it in and out.
In any case, the original question remains, how does the 1026 differentiate between noise and signal?