I agree, its always best to approach the person, unless maybe they have a
10' fence with barbed wire on it and a nasty dog inside, of course. An
important foot-in-the-door tactic is the warning that failing or defective
electronics can generate the type of noise you are hearing and could be a
fire hazard, which is (almost) always true. If that doesn't work then a
second contact, pointing out that some defective stuff can interfere with
car radios and be detected from some distance away, and if it is interfering
with broadcast or public service or aircraft radios the fcc is liable to
come for a visit... at that point offering to help find and quiet down the
offending noise maker got the ballast and bulb delivered to me in an hour.
I never did have to go in the house and I have no idea if he is growing
tomatoes or something else, but its nice and quiet again.
David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net:7373
-----Original Message-----
From: RFI [mailto:rfi-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Jim Brown
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2016 04:07
To: rfi@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RFI] Portable DFing at HF
On Sat,8/13/2016 7:44 PM, Dave Cole wrote:
> Respectfully, I must disagree with you here. I think that is
> absolutely the wrong way to handle this issue.
I also agree that what Kurt is suggesting is absolutely the wrong approach.
And I also believe that it's wrong to assume that the grower is a "bad guy."
Some may be, but many may not. I've known some very nice guys, even some
hams, who have been known to cultivate some "weed," and a lot more who
consume it. Here in CA, and in several other states, individuals are
permitted to grow a certain quantity of weed for their own use, and in some
states are permitted to raise some for sale. And this is a moving target --
laws on raising "weed" are being relaxed somewhere in almost every election
cycle. When my mother was growing up in the coal fields of West Virginia and
Kentucky nearly 100 years ago, moonshine was nearly as important to the
local economy as coal. Now, the cash crop is "weed." Ditto for large parts
of rural California.
A FAR better approach to ANY RF noise situation, whether it's a grow
operation, a solar system, switching power supplies, or even a plasma TV, is
to approach the person with the noise source starting with something like,
"I need some help from you." Then tell them that you have been having
serious noise problems in your ham station, that you believe that you have
tracked it to something in their home, and that you would like the
opportunity to work with them to solve the problem.
In the case of a grow operation, tell him that you don't really care about
his business or personal life, but you really need his help getting rid of
that noise. Your neighbor may cooperate because he's a nice guy, or because
he might realize that if you can track him down by the noise, the
authorities may too. So killing his noise is to his benefit.
And go on from there. If it's a grow operation, there are hams who have
done lots of serious work on solving it with effective filters that can be
applied to the grow lights and their associated electronics, which are the
source of the noise. Two who have done the most are members of this
reflector -- W0IVJ and W0QE. I've summarized some of their relevant advice
and added some tutorial background in
http://k9yc.com/KillingReceiveNoise.pdf
with links to their work. There's even a link to a commercial product sold
by W7LOZ based on W0IVJ's design.
73, Jim K9YC
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