EMI Troubleshooting Kit

There is a series of articles on the Test & Measurement website that are very much worth reading if your job or hobby involves hunting down RF/EMI leakage into or out of a PCB or enclosure. Author Kenneth Wyatt has an impressive bag of tricks you can use. One slick trick used by his colleague Doug Smith involves a literal bag with a few coins in it. Shaking said bag-o-coins generates EMI with edges in the 100 ps realm. I know from much experience about the electrical noise caused by metal-to-metal contact from the days of 27 and 72 MHz radio control systems in model airplanes. Throttle control arms on the carburetors used to be made of metal, and using a metal pushrod for connection would almost guarantee jittering servos from EMI interference. Meshing metal gears on early R/C helicopters was a nightmare. But I digress. Another nifty trick used by Mr. Wyatt is to use an igniter from a patio gas grill to generate wideband EMI. He has an easy-to-make spark gap tool as well. Take a few minutes to scan through some of the info; you'll be glad you did if for no other reason than the "well, huh!" factor.

Posted March 2013

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Kirt Blattenberger,

BSEE - KB3UON

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...

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