The tech answer to QRM?

Living in suburbia, QRM is an uphill battle. Over the back fence, the paddock once full of horses has a row of temporary fencing splitting it up. That only means one thing: New houses.  It also means more bloody users who'll wind up on the same NBN Fixed Wireless tower slowing it down even further, but that's another issue worthy of its own rant.

There are times of day where radios here are barely usable on HF, even making local traffic vanish under noise. I cannot turn off all of this gear that generates a chunk of it, so what to do?

I heard about the Wimo QRM Eliminator, and eventually it's less expensive clones. A device that quite simply connects between you transceiver and antenna and a smaller antenna intended to pickup the QRM - something placed around the shack so it picks up noise and not actual traffic. 

It then throws the two signals 180 degrees out of phase, causing the noise to be nulled out. 

There seem to be plenty of reviews saying these are effective. There's also plenty of hams who'd prefer to tell you to just add more ferrites, more toroids,move out of town or just replace anything causing you interference. All valid, but not always the entire solution (or achievable for that matter). 

There does seem to be a black art involved in tuning them, some saying there is a bit of a learning curve involved. Sounds like something for a ham to do. 

In my case, I'll want to use it mainly with the IC706, so I need to acquire the linear amplifier keyer cable as well. It's probably easy enough to build.. if one could find the right 13 pin plug. I may do a little more  digging, as the only premade cables I can find will cost over $50 to land. Expensive for 2 plugs. If I was ever inclined to use an amplifier with it (and I'm not),  I'd be going for pre-made with the relay buffer built in. But I'm not. I just need to be able to push the PTT signal to the device so it can flick over to the transmit antenna when I transmit. 

I'm probably going to use one of the QRM Eliminator clones. My already non-existent budget doesn't facilitate the Wimo model. It definitely doesn't extend to the MFJ version of the same thing. 

QRM Eliminator - a clone of the Wimo device

 

I'm probably a month or so away from being able to order one, but I'll be curious to try it out. I'm not sure it could hurt.