More reliable PW connection

In my post earlier today I noted that Pocketwizards aren’t always reliable when they have a wire plugged into them. That, and you need to keep them away from 430EX flashes, and point the antenna on the receiving side the same way as that on the sender, ideally.

The “a cable plugged in makes the receiver unreliable” phenomenon is presumably due to some of the RF going into that wire. So a possible solution should have been obvious to a radio amateur/electrical engineer like me:

Yes, that’s is: the little RF choke I put on the cable. And indeed, my testing shows that this type of choke seems to keep the receiver significantly more sensitive. Problem solved (or at least, problem alleviated: the other recommendations still stand).

0 thoughts on “More reliable PW connection

  1. Pingback: Pocketwoes « Michael Willems Daily Photography Blog

  2. Is this a new problem? I’m surprised it has not surfaced before. The photons must be colder and have less energy in the Canadian winter.

    Do you know why Nikon put a RF choke on the power cable for my camera battery charger? The charger for my Nokia phone doesn’t have one. Neither do my laptop chargers. I’d have thought the phone would be more likely to have interference issues.

  3. Photons have the same energy but there’s more of them – this in essence is what Einstein solved in his 1905 paper on the photo-electric effect!

    RF chokes are used everywhere where RF can get into LF circuits. Many USB cables, power supplies, and other cables (which afetr all can act as antennas) have them embedded in the cable. First thing you think about in case of RF interference – or it shoujld have been the first thing I thought of…

  4. John,

    I did not, but I have now – thanks for the link. This is clearly a response to people just like me, who are not convinced the new PW’s are quite there yet. Happy to see this, therefore. I am looking forward to trying out the TTL version of the PWs soon.

    M

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