[RFI] My power line noise problems, revisited (Warning, this islong!) No...

[Tom Horton]

John,
  As I have said many times before...I fought it 9 years.
I finally had to go to the West Virginia Public Service Commission.
Even after that, it took a couple of years to get everything fixed.
But now, 99% of the time I have s0 line noise!
  Just don't give up, and use every tool you have. A copy of the
ARRL RFI letter does seem to get people moving.
What ever it takes! They are in the wrong!
73, Tom K5IID



At 05:15 02/06/04, Pete Smith wrote:
>At 11:33 PM 2/5/04 -0500, Tom Rauch wrote:
>>I think when the smoke clears you'll find about 90% of the problems are
>>slack spans allowing bell insulators to hang loosly and have pins corrode
>>and arc, or other loose hardware or metal in the strong electric field area
>>near the wires (like brackets) arcing. Sometimes the tie wires that secure
>>the primary to knob insulators don't have a solid contact with the primary
>>and arc. Sometimes they drill holes through poles and have two isolated
>>pieces of metal near the primary in losses contact and arcing.
>
>
>Amen.  I have had very good cooperation from my power company, as long as 
>I can identify the pole or poles that were involved, because the local 
>maintenance district does not have the equipment or knowledgeable people 
>any more -- downsizing.  About 95 percent of the problems I've found and 
>they have fixed were slack spans that were installed with taut span 
>hardware -- in slack spans, this produces the exact problem Tom 
>describes.  They have new hardware that involves a rigidly mounted 
>insulator on each end and fixes the problem right.
>
>The other noise-maker I found and they fixed was a lightning arrestor 
>mounted with two lag screws through the bracket.  A woodpecker had 
>undermined one of them so that the screw was loose, and it was so close to 
>the 7500 volts that the field induced differing voltages on the bolt and 
>bracket, producing mini-arcs.  Here, the lineman told me that the newer 
>hardware has only one bolt; in effect, they would rather have the bracket 
>come off the pole entirely than have hard-to-find loose hardware.
>
>My noise-locating strategy involves the car radio, set to AM, followed by 
>a portable SW radio, followed by a DFer built from the design in QST with 
>a Moxon rectangle antenna at 136 MHz.  I listen threugh it with a 
>shirt-pocket handi-talkie that has AM receive.  The Moxon has a nice deep 
>null off the rear that makes it easy to first follow the maximum signal, 
>then turn the antenna around to verify which pole it is.  If there's any 
>doubt, rattling guy wires or thumping the pole will produce an easily 
>identifiable change in the noise.
>
>
>73, Pete N4ZR
>Check out the World HF Contest Station Database
>Updated 9 Jan 04
>www.pvrc.org/wcsd/wcsdsearch.htm
>
>
>
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"E"  Sorter for the ARRL W5 QSL Bureau
Williamstown, WV