[600MRG] Distance from powerline question

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi Steve,

All of that is right on the money. I have identified and corrected some 
of those same things here in my own home. I would have assumed (shame on 
me) that *everybody* knows about all of that by now. But as a matter of 
fact, on one of the lists recently one fellow told us he has no 
neighbors (oh really) and that it couldn't possibly be in his own home 
because he doesn't change anything but the noise comes and goes. At the 
time I couldn't think of a polite way to challenge either of his 
statements and they both were way off the mark. Some days I swear I am 
turning into Jeff Dunham's puppet, Walter!

Still, we are subjected to a lot of "schtough" that we can't so easily 
eliminate. And it promises to get worse. Most of my stuff arrives with 
the weekenders and tourists - Lord bless their pea-pickin' hearts. My 
own livelihood does not rely directly on the cash they leave here when 
they go home but the wellbeing of my 'community' *does*. Sometimes the 
guy in the collision repair shop uses an electric welder and some of 
those times I can hear it on the radios (not even every time). He takes 
the biggest chunks of spectrum but he doesn't use that welder every day 
and when he does it's more like mid morning. I'm on mornings at oh dark 
thirty and evenings or sometimes late night. So I don't have it as bad 
here as some of our friends.

This thread has spilled over into a couple of other lists but I haven't 
posted to it in those worlds. It seems a lot of hams are getting more 
interested all the time. Who else is willing to do some "brainstorming"? 
Assuming there is a brain or two among us actually capable of storms 
<evil grin>.

73,

Bill  KU8H


On 12/08/2014 11:56 PM, sbjohnston at aol.com wrote:
>   
> On a related note, don't always assume wideband RF noise problems are "powerline" noise.  The last three guys I helped with their noise problems all had noisemaking devices right in their house - once those were unplugged they could hear normal MF and HF background hiss with little or no buzz.
>
> One guy had three devices making the lion's share of the interference:  a cellphone charger, the power adapter for his cable modem, and a DVD player.
>
> The second of these fellows had a TV set making lots of noise, even when turned off.  We put it on a power strip so he could positively cut the power to it.
>
> And the third guy had a microwave oven, a cellphone charger, and a rechargable tool charger making excessive RF noise.
>
> All these devices have switching power supplies which I feel were responsible for the RFI.  The TV set made a different, grinding sort of noise, so it may have had other sources of the interference but I still put my money on a switching power supply (maybe higher voltage type for the plasma display).  We used older AC adapters of similar ratings from thrift stores to replace the switch mode types supplied with portable devices.
>
> All three guys were originally certain that they had powerline noise in their neighborhood.  I convinced them to turn off all the breakers in their house while we listened to the noise on a battery powered Sony ICF-2010 receiver.  When the noise dropped to nil with the house power off they were astonished.  We then started turning breakers back on one at a time to identify which rooms had the worst noise sources.
>
>
>
> Steve WD8DAS / WH2XHY
>
> sbjohnston at aol.com
> http://www.wd8das.net/
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