On Feb 13, 8:28 am, "RST Engineering"
Not an unusual situation with inexpensive radios with poor front end

The radio is an Icom A5. Definitely on the low end of the radio cost
spectrum.

That probably wasn't the cleverest way of doing it. Describe your
installation a little more, but I think I can guarantee you that it isn't
the antenna.

The A5 is connected to a DRE portable intercom and then to my
headphones. The
antenna is a simple wire about 22 inches long soldered to an rf
connector. The
connector is mated to a bulkhead rf fitting that has the cable
soldered to it. I forget the
cable designator, but it has fairly low attenuation at 100mhz, and is
the same impedance
as the output of the radio. I ran the power, headphone, and push to
talk wiring through
torroids near the radio, but that didn't do much improvement. The
only time this shows
up is near the more powerful transmitters. I suspected the front end
of the radio, but I
don't know how to prove or disprove that. I figured that if power was
clean and antenna was
clean, then I'm pretty much left with the radio. Oh yeah, taking the
intercom out of the
mix makes no difference.

Then why in heaven's name would you suspect YOUR antenna if the same thing
happens to OTHER aircraft and their radios? Their antennas couldn't have
ALL failed in the same way.

Agreed, and I misspoke. There was only one other plane that I know
has this problem.
But, again, I'm trying to eliminate what I can with the equipment I
have at my disposal. As
you can see from my choice of radio gear, I'm on a budget. 8^)

tom