This brings to mind my favorite "how to get their attention" story.
A few years ago, I found an broken side mount insulator on a power line at a
bend in the street, not far from my QTH. The high voltage line was laying
across the low voltage service line to the house across the street. I called
and left a message with my power company contact, but a after a few days
(including a weekend) nothing happened.
So I called back and left a message like "I hope you can get this fixed,
because I'd really hate to have to take time off work to come downtown to
testify in court that you knew about this and did nothing to fix it."
The next day it was fixed.
73 - Jim K8MR
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger (K8RI) <k8ri@rogerhalstead.com>
To: rfi <rfi@contesting.com>
Sent: Thu, Feb 11, 2016 10:08 am
Subject: [RFI] RFI chasing. and cable leaks.
"Used to be" on cable, I believe 145.25 was the audio sub channel for
cable ch 18. I don't know what they have there now with digital, but I
don't thing they had to change.
I posted this quite a while back, but I've never had a sense of time.
When I lived in Alma Mi in the early 80s and the local frequencies most
used were 52 and 58.
Based on my old memory:
I was coming into town just checking frequencies I hit a full scale
signal on 145.25. Don't know what I was doing down there, (1980 is a
long time ago - check the archives) but just scanning frequencies. I hit
a full scale frequency on 145.25. It was just as I was padding the
local cable office. It was after 5:00 so they were closed, so I drove
around town and found many cable leaks.
The next day, I stopped at the office, went and told them, but they
weren't worried until I keyed my HT. The screens tore up, so I switched
from low to high power (5W) and the screens went plank. The tech said,
"that's because you're so close. I walked out to the car IIRC about a
100 feet away and keyed the HT.. The tech appeared at the door
frantically waving at me. I walked up and asked if he wanted me to turn
on the mobile at 50 watts. He said no, the HT at 5W in the parking lot
was taking out the cable service for all channels for the entire town.
I explained that there were quite a few of running 50 watts mobile
around town to reach the regional repeater.
The next afternoon when I came into town...silence. I did hear it at a
few intersections and those were silent the next day. They must have
had crews scrambeling to tighten connections for a couple of days. They
were unconcerned about messing with hams, but when they saw first hand a
simple hand held HT could dump the entire system they quickly changed
their approach to one asking us to report if we ever found any leaks.
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