[RFI] Pwerline noise (Sorted)

[Brendan Minish]

I just wanted to share my joy ;-) 

I have had a line noise issue for a number of years, basically it was at
a low enough level to not be much of an issue until they upped the MV
voltage from 10Kv to 20Kv in this area, then it became a problem.

I traced it with a 70Cm antenna and HT (in am mode) and identified
several sources on a couple of poles. On a dry day it was also possible
to hear noise at some of these sources using a 'bat detector' Ultrasound
receiver. 

I spoke with my local utility people and they came out to take a look,
remedial work was going to require an outage so I agreed that it could
wait until the next planned outage on that segment of line. 

They initially spoke of changing out lots of stuff (transformer,
Insulators etc) but I suggested that it was probably just loose hardware
due to pole shrinkage & age and that simply tightening up everything may
well be sufficient.  

well today we had the outage (for other reasons further up the line) and
they came out (in horrible weather), found and tightened up lots of
loose hardware on 5 poles (I had only ID'ed 2 as possible sources ),
redid some lashings and now the problem is gone.

I think if they had got too 'hung up' on replacing hardware they would
not have had time to tighten up all the other bits of hardware and might
have missed something.



-- 
73
Brendan EI6IZ