[RFI] Documenting Power Line Noise

[Ford Peterson]

I live on a rural property in the shadow of a nasty power line.  It runs along the highway in front of my property.  When that baby is under full load, S9 noise throughout the HF spectrum is not out of the norm.

They've been pretty good about fixing it near my property, but as you drive along the length of it, most major AM stations are swamped out from the noise at certain locations.

Recently, that line is down.  They are doing maintenance to a line that runs perpendicular to it and the noise level around here is nill.  Absolutely nill.  I love it.  I can see the shorting straps connected on the lines to protect the workers as they replace all the poles on an aging line about 1/2 mile from here.

My question?  How do I document my lack of noise today, so I can compare it to and PROVE to the power line techs that their line is junk?  I've had them out here before and they sniff around poles with a gismo that looks like a 450MHz 4 element yagi.  But I'm worried about HF.  The 160M noise off that line has been known to be +20 over S 9.  Right now it is NILL wil the preamps on.  I want to be able to prove to them that they are WAY out of compliance and the toys they show up with to find 'hot spots' is nothing but a joke as the entire line radiates hash noise throughout low HF.

Ford-N0FP
ford at cmgate.com