Power Outage

[N1MLF]

Friday I lashed up a shiney new 40M flat top. Got it finished & installed by about dark 30.. so the euro QRM was takeing over the band. I gave up on it for the evening & went about other things.
Saturday morning I fired up the rig & tuned across the band. Many QSO's in progress and a few contesters heard. I had a couple QSO's but there was a lot of QRN.. buzzing, static & general noise at @ S7-S8.
Then of all wonders the AC grid went down. AND stayed down for over an hour. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif The cool side of this is the fact that the gear runs off a huge bank of 6V deep cycle batteries.
The noise floor dropped to an S1-S2 & I had several QSO's from all over the eastern US & Canada. Most were 59 copy.
So now I gotta find, and try to eliminate, some of the local noise generated by the grid. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif
Probably not an easy task & I may not get all of it but cutting it in half would be an excellent improvement.
Seems one project just leads to another..
73 de JW

[k4lem]

Yeah, a lot of people have same bad power line QRM which as far as I can tell is illegal under part 15, but who is there to make the power company do a damn thing.

With 6kv power lines, old insulators on dry days especially will leak causing very high broadband EMF noise.

A funny experience, I had a very bad power line noise in my previous QTH in Vermont. I called Power Company who did nothing and never returned the call.
On the weekend following at about 3 am fire trucks screamed by waking the traquil neighborhood.

Guess what, a transformer and pole fire just one half mile up the road. Funny thing, thereafter, that noise level went away!
http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[WA2ZDY]

Funny how justice works sometimes, isn't it?

[kj3n]

You're a sick little monkey.

http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif