Another good source for an ultrasonic (US) kit and a construction
article is www.midnightscience.com, website of The Xtal Set Society. I
built a receiver (about $150) on their instructions. It has been so
successful our local very responsive power coop bought a $4500
commercial version.
The power coop didn't make this investment out of gratitude for my
discovery of numerous noise sources, although I did that with my combo
IC706, VHF whip on the car, and US detector. They did it because they
had a cost study done that concluded about 7% of their energy was going
to ground via noisy leaks. Old infrastructure seems to be the primary
culprit around here. The study prompted the employment of an engineer,
an expensive receiver specifically intended to find leaks, and (after
seeing mine in action) the US detector. Their commercial US detector is
30 times more expensive than my plumbers delight model, and perhaps
twice more effective.
Their receiver is a real asset. The noise engineer and I hook it to my
antennas, note the pulse characteristics of the power leak, then are
able to practically drive right to it. Some of the time anyway and given
a pretty strong QRN signal.
The bad news is no matter how successful I am new sources keep on coming
on. Stuff breaks, the temperature varies, the wind blows, lightning
strikes, the line crews over and under tighten hardware or install
wrong, poles decay away and catch fire, birds fry - a never ending task.
If anyone's interested in photos please email off the reflector k6xt at
arrl dot net.
--
73 Art K6XT~~
near Allison Colorado
Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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