no more 20db over 9 noise level. after months of searching, adding grounds, and getting an artificial ground i finally found the source of the noise. i left navy mars because i could not hear the nets but the noise is gone for good, unless i need to charge the battery on my laptop. it took forever to find as i was looking at all the usual suspects, but yesterday when trying to get a brand new but broken mp3 player working for one of the kids i had the laptop in the shack and plugged in the power adapter. at that moment my radio which had been without the noise for 2 days went off the wall back to the 20 db over. unplugged it and i could hear everyone again. i am happy to have found it but i hate that it took so long. the intermittent nature told me it was electrical but i thought i had tried everything. it is only the one power adapter and i do have others that work fine but with three laptops using the same type adapters there was always one plugged into it. leave it to the chinese to build a noisy power adapter. (aftermarket cheepie for my old dells) i have to remember that that one is unplugged while i am trying to play radio.