Batteries and RFI

[Jamier]

Are batteries susceptible to RFI? The reason I ask is: my Quickie has had off and on issues with noise that I finally tracked down to the WiFi in my house ( I know many of you have had wifi noise issues also). After many rearrangements of various pieces of gear the thing that finally silenced the noise was placing fairly heavy metal weights on top of the 9V batteries. The weights are not large enough to cover the terminals but they do completely cover the body of the batteries. So, now I am not sure if the noise elimination is due to better contact of the battery to the terminal connection or if the metal weight is shielding the battery,  but now I don't have the fizzle, crackle and pop that I had before.

Jamie

[Paul Joppa]

You can replace the weights with tinfoil as a test - it will serve as shielding without affecting the contacts.

[Paul Birkeland]

Wow, that's pretty unusual!  The internal resistance of a battery is so low that it's hard to imagine stray RF influencing them much, but you never know what aspects of the internal battery construction are going to come into play create what you've observed. 

One suggestion beyond PJ's is that the weight might be influencing mechanical connections in your Quickie, so you might want to try half of a brick or something non conductive to test.