[CQ-Contest] Power Line & Switching station noise?

[Jim George]

Paul, my wife and I are in a similar situation in a rural area 15 miles 
west of Austin, TX. There is an electrical substation one mile away at 
which approximately 160KV distribution lines come into a transformer bank 
that switches to 14.4KV for local distribution to a rural residential area 
and developments. We are on six acres. Most of our neighbors are on between 
one and three acres. We have no RFI from the 160KV lines or from the 
transformer bank. All the noise is from either tree branches that are not 
cut back by the power company and that touch local 14.4KV lines, or from 
loose connectors on the 14.5KV wiring system, which is above ground in our 
rural setting. There have been the occasional noisy connections on a pole 
at the lightning arrestor, or other pole connectors, as well as mercury 
vapor lights which have loose-hanging wiring that induces HV form the 
14.4KV lines. The transformer which changes 14.4KV to 240V for the house 
rarely is a problem. In addition, I have located poles in a two mile radius 
that are improperly "set up" by the power company with incorrect insulators 
(called bells), or with loose and noisy ground wires. The incidence of 
noise at the large transformer substation or on any of the very high 
voltage distribution lines has been zero.

Jim George
N3BB

At 09:27 AM 11/2/2010 -0400, you wrote:
>What do you guys think? Please reply to Ben & Sarah at:
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>benjaminarthurt at yahoo.com
><http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/options/rdxa/benjaminarthurt--at--yahoo.com>
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>Subject: [RDXA] Power Line & Switching station noise?
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>Sarah and I are looking at houses, near Syracuse.
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>The house at the top of our list right now has a power grid switching
>station (see link below). With several sets of high tension lines and this
>switching station all about 1 mile away, do you think we will experience any
>issues with noise? The property is sitting on about 3 Acres half of which is
>fairly heavily forested. It seems like a decent choice for us for both a
>home and a Ham Radio property.
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>http://ak2x.bentownsend.com/index.php/Houses
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>Would love to get anyone's feedback as far as noise from the power lines
>goes.
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>Thanks,
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>Ben - AK2X
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