[RFI] electric fence

Steve K7AWB k7awbgoog at gmail.com
Mon Jul 2 18:57:13 PDT 2012


When I moved to the Spokane Valley  in 1973, my neighbor had an electric 
fence around the vacant lot between our houses which had a horse or two. 
That sometimes caused me to have RF interference (popping) and I would go 
out with the following and light the lamps to prove that the fence was hot. 
The problem solved itself when the horses went and the new zoning forbid 
animals like those once they were gone from a lot.

I used a Rodale cat. no.18 neon ac/dc tester with the brown body and yellow 
and red leads; also a NE-2 bulb on the end of a large stick.  I still have 
them and used them again tonight at my newer place.

I am wondering if the new electric fences use a control units that are all 
electronic? Tonight I could not get neither lamp to light when putting the 
leads on the electric fence behind me on my 20 acres.  It is popping over S9 
on 20 meters.  I can hear it arcing in the air on a dry day (today) by 
walking next to it.  Of course the ham transceiver handles it nicely except 
for the distortion it creates when there are loud signals around my 
listening frequency.  Maybe the oscillation frequency is so high that the 
neon lamps don't get enough voltage to light??

I will be talking to my neighbor (he's my plumber) soon about it and it 
should work it self out.
73
Steve Sala
K7AWB
DN17es
Nine Mile Falls, WA
477 ARRL approved 6-meter grids confirmed
307 ARRL approved DXCC entities confirmed 



More information about the RFI mailing list