[RFI] rfi problem

[Cortland Richmond]

Some years ago, AT&T Cable installed carrier current modems on its boxes 
to handle dialup for billing. These operated on 3.52 MHz, which quickly 
came to the notice of the Northern California DX Asssociation and then 
the ARRL.

I was one Sunday tracking these down in Petaluma, CA when I saw a 
strange activity.  As I drove my antenna and loop festooned mobile 
along,  people were running out of their houses into back yards. One 
might be a barbecue in need of care, another a dog got loose, but in 
time I realized they had been stealing cable service to watch the 
football game; someone had seen me approaching dwellings with a handheld 
loop and receiver and, thinking I was from the Cable company, phoned 
ahead to remove illegal cable connections before they could be discovered.

That was a fine reward for my efforts. Ha!

WRT to 145.23, when I was in MA in the 1980's, the Boston Marathon used 
the Red Cross repeater for its comms, and had trouble every year with 
leakage of the audio carrier there. Nowadays, things may be worse; 
digital TV signals almost fill each channel.

Cortland
KA5S

On 11/1/2012 1702, Dave Cole wrote:
> Several years ago I had a problem on 2 Meters with cable RFI...  I
> looked at the cable junction in the back of our yard...  There was a
> cable running out of it, across the ground, and into the back yard of
> someone about 400 feet away...  Called the cable company, the problem
> disappeared, and so thd the illegal splice...  It takes a log of
> "hutzpah" to do something like that...  I can't imagine running a big
> black arrow to my house like that...  Oh well...  RFI is gone...