N4AUD
02-27-2007, 07:10 PM
Yesterday I sat down in my shack and flipped on the transceiver on 20 meters. There was a horrendous noise on the band, a buzzing static from end to end. I changed bands again and again and the noise was present from 160m through 6m. It was so strong none of the bands were usable with all of the filtering and dsp I could muster.
I have a Dept. of Transportation shop across the road, and sometimes they do cause some interference, but never this strong. I picked up my little portable Grundig, left the antenna folded, and began to investigate. The noise was present throughout my home, but louder on one end. I went outside, turning this way and that with the receiver, and notice when it was pointed at the power pole behind the house that has the transformer for our service drop, the noise increased. That pole is at the end of the house where the noise was loudest. By the time I got to the bottom of the pole the interference was really incredible. I walked around the pole with the radio and sure enough it seemed as if that was the source.
I went back inside and called the power company. It took a good 20 minutes to navigate their %%#* phone menu system and get to talk to a live person. She was very polite and listened to what I had to say, and I even let her listen to the noise. She said someone would contact me shortly.
I received a call a while later from a man at the company who was also very polite and listened to my problem and said he would send someone out.
When the sun went down, the noise began to subside and was gone later that night.
Today, I had fallen asleep on the couch (I worked a midnight shift) when all of a sudden the dog (who had probably been asleep too) started barking his head off, and someone was knocking at the door. It was a guy in a power company truck. I told him to hang on a minute and checked the noise on my radios. It was GONE. I grabbed my portable receiver again and went outside and explained the problem to him.
He was incredulous. Didn't believe that their stuff could cause a problem and that I could find it with that little transistor radio and didn't know what they could do if there was something wrong and he didn't think there was because I wasn't having any power problems in the house. Very dismissive. I explained to him how you CAN actually find interference sources with a cheap portable radio but I couldn't show him because the noise was gone. I suggested that I could be related to temperature or humidity since it disappeared after dark. He wasn't buying it and was ready to leave. I asked if I could call him again if it came back and he said he didn't see the point and he didn't believe anything I found with that transistor radio anyway.
I said "Come on in the house a minute." I took him in, showed him my shack and my equipment and said I did have a pretty good idea about what I was doing and I really didn't like it when the thousands of dollars of equipment he was looking at was unusable. It just so happened that I had printed off an FCC Enforcement letter that happened to have been sent out to a power company in Texas for harmful interference. I explained to him that it was a fairly serious offense to interfere with a federally licensed station, and that in a real emergency amateur radio is sometimes used for communications (I know I piled it on).
He began to see things differently. He became interested in what the possible source of the interference might have been. He wanted me to call him if it happened again, wanted to know if I could operate my stuff on battery power if they worked on the transformer and insulators so I could tell them if the noise stopped. I said I could, and as he left he said he would come right over if I called about the interference.
But of course my luck is that there wasn't any noise for him to hear.
I wonder how this is going to play out?
I have a Dept. of Transportation shop across the road, and sometimes they do cause some interference, but never this strong. I picked up my little portable Grundig, left the antenna folded, and began to investigate. The noise was present throughout my home, but louder on one end. I went outside, turning this way and that with the receiver, and notice when it was pointed at the power pole behind the house that has the transformer for our service drop, the noise increased. That pole is at the end of the house where the noise was loudest. By the time I got to the bottom of the pole the interference was really incredible. I walked around the pole with the radio and sure enough it seemed as if that was the source.
I went back inside and called the power company. It took a good 20 minutes to navigate their %%#* phone menu system and get to talk to a live person. She was very polite and listened to what I had to say, and I even let her listen to the noise. She said someone would contact me shortly.
I received a call a while later from a man at the company who was also very polite and listened to my problem and said he would send someone out.
When the sun went down, the noise began to subside and was gone later that night.
Today, I had fallen asleep on the couch (I worked a midnight shift) when all of a sudden the dog (who had probably been asleep too) started barking his head off, and someone was knocking at the door. It was a guy in a power company truck. I told him to hang on a minute and checked the noise on my radios. It was GONE. I grabbed my portable receiver again and went outside and explained the problem to him.
He was incredulous. Didn't believe that their stuff could cause a problem and that I could find it with that little transistor radio and didn't know what they could do if there was something wrong and he didn't think there was because I wasn't having any power problems in the house. Very dismissive. I explained to him how you CAN actually find interference sources with a cheap portable radio but I couldn't show him because the noise was gone. I suggested that I could be related to temperature or humidity since it disappeared after dark. He wasn't buying it and was ready to leave. I asked if I could call him again if it came back and he said he didn't see the point and he didn't believe anything I found with that transistor radio anyway.
I said "Come on in the house a minute." I took him in, showed him my shack and my equipment and said I did have a pretty good idea about what I was doing and I really didn't like it when the thousands of dollars of equipment he was looking at was unusable. It just so happened that I had printed off an FCC Enforcement letter that happened to have been sent out to a power company in Texas for harmful interference. I explained to him that it was a fairly serious offense to interfere with a federally licensed station, and that in a real emergency amateur radio is sometimes used for communications (I know I piled it on).
He began to see things differently. He became interested in what the possible source of the interference might have been. He wanted me to call him if it happened again, wanted to know if I could operate my stuff on battery power if they worked on the transformer and insulators so I could tell them if the noise stopped. I said I could, and as he left he said he would come right over if I called about the interference.
But of course my luck is that there wasn't any noise for him to hear.
I wonder how this is going to play out?