[RFI] Grow Lights

Eric - VE3GSI ve3gsi at sympatico.ca
Sat Jan 1 17:23:29 PST 2011


Hi Joe,

Sorry no recording, but I can tell you from first hand experience with the
ballasts used on lower power (300 Watt) grow lights I once tried. I did get
a broadband hash and electrical buzz on the rig with a very high floor
noise, no pulsing, no whistles just wide band noise. The interference was
worse with my rig on 80 meters, which I suspect was because one leg of the
dipole went over the house. There was enough hash/buzz from the ballast in
fixtures to actually show sparkles in a TV picture off my satellite
receiver. The ballasts also interfered with the X10 timers I used to switch
the lamps on/off.

The dealer assured me the ballast would not cause interference on my radios,
needless to say I did not keep them. I do not remember the manufacture of
the ballasts.

Eric - VE3GSI

P.S. I assure you the plants I was growing at the time were not smoked or
turned into cookies. <grin>


-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Wilkowski
Sent: January-01-11 4:08 PM
To: rfi at contesting.com
Subject: [RFI] Grow Lights

A recent quote from another thread on this reflector...

Wait 'till you have an indoor
marijuana farmer in your neighborhood with 1KW grow lights running off
switched-mode ballasts that probably don't even meet industrial
emissions rules!   I was told that "grow lights" are now the #1 source
of ham RFI complaints at the ARRL; eclipsing powerline noise
complaints.

Does anyone have a bonified rfi recording of these things ?  Can you post it
?

Thanks




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