[Amps] TVI story

[Gudguyham at aol.com]

The story that stands out most that I was told by Phil Rand was this  one.  
Phil and a helper were called to help a ham in New York who was  having TVI 
complaints from an apartment house several blocks down from his  house.  The 
surrounding apartment houses much closer to him had no  problems.  When he would 
transmit on AM (in those days) on a particular  band this apartment house 
several blocks down would have all their TV reception  destroyed by this guys 
signal.  None of the closer apartment houses were  affected, just that one several 
blocks down.  Phil arrived on the scene  with a helper and a portable TV set.  
The guy would transmit and Phil  walked the neighborhood with the portable 
TV, no problem until he was in front  of the apartment house were all the TV's 
were going screwy from his  signal.  Phil quickly concluded there was something 
suspicious about that  particular house, so he entered the hallway of the 
house and checked the degree  of interference  at each floor of the house.  He 
found that the  interference was worse on the lower floors than at the top of 
the  building.  He decided to go into the basement area to look around  there.  
It was a dark old basement of an old apartment building.  They  still had coal 
burning stoves that were converted to burn oil.  Phil's  helper was looking 
around at all the old technology of heating buildings and  came across an old 
coal "Poker", a long iron rod (about 10 feet) with a hook on  the end and a 
nice BRASS handle.  This Poker was laying up against the cast  iron stove, with 
the Brass handle against the cast iron stove.  It had been  there for many 
years unmoved.  AS Phil was looking at the TVI on the TV the  helper grabbed the 
poker to have a look at it.  As soon as the poker was  removed from laying 
against the stove, the TVI was gone!  The poker laying  against the cast iron 
stove with a brass handle had created a non linear diode  effect and the length of 
the poker acted as an antenna for the spurious   radiations.  Problem solved! 
 
73 Lou



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