[RFI] LED Bulbs

[Dave Cole]

Along those same lines...

The LED replacement bulbs from Walmart generate copious amounts of RFI
on the 20/17/12/10 meter bands.  These are the ones designed to replace
a 75 watt bulb.  

I will get the model number and post here later this week...
-- 


Thanks,
Dave
http://www.nk7z.net for equipment/software reviews.



On Mon, 2014-02-10 at 07:35 -0500, David C. Hallam wrote:
> The following is part of a message I received from a ham friend of mine 
> who lives in Northern New Jersey.
> 
> David
> KW4DH
> 
> > I've been tearing my hair out for 2 months because of unbelievable RFI on 2
> > meters, rendering terrestrial and EME impossible. The following text pretty
> > much sums up what I finally found today. This may be a big problem because
> > the FCC considers that once identified, the liability for correction is on
> > the generator of the RFI and if not stopped immediately then they can be
> > fined. Who would have thought the LED's could radiate so far? If you want to
> > see some pictures from the spectrum analyzer I'll send them down. You
> > wouldn't believe it!
> >
> > "At last the source of the RFI has been positively identified!
> >
> > To recap, the wideband RFI centered on 145 MHz which began in mid-December
> > was isolated to a specific house at 22 Cedars Road in Caldwell, NJ about 700
> > feet from my home. The RF level was about 20db over S-9 or nearly 1
> > millivolt, yes, "millivolt' at my receiver. It wiped out the entire 2 meter
> > band as well as the lower portion of the public safety and aircraft
> > spectrum.
> >
> > While the RFI sounded like AC line buzz, looking at it on a spectrum
> > analyzer showed a 20 MHz wide signal that swept and pulsated. PSEG was
> > instrumental in first identifying that the RFI was wideband and close to the
> > residence in question as I had determined from walking the area. I then used
> > a 4 element 2 meter yagi to positively identify the direction of the source.
> > I considered that the problem might be channel 18 leakage from Comcast cable
> > but that did not prove to be the case.
> >
> > I was able to talk to the home owner who was very cooperative in working
> > with me to find the source. I first thought that it was associated with TV
> > usage but several tests did not yield the precise problem though the
> > Comacast cable box and Samsung large screen TV were able to be heard inside
> > the house on my Yaesu HT in AM mode but nowhere near the level I was seeing
> > at times at my home. It seemed that when the homeowner was not home the RFI
> > would disappear and in that case TV's were off.
> >
> > Today, another test was made where the homeowner turned off all TV's and the
> > RFI was still present. She then started tripping breakers and the RFI
> > completely disappeared! It was now positive that the RFI was from something
> > I the home. Further testing revealed the source as 9 LED lamps in the
> > kitchen that had been installed in mid-December, at the time I first noticed
> > the beginning of the problem.
> >
> > The lamps were obtained at Home Depot and are the Eco-Smart brand, MR-16
> > halogen replacements and are rated at 50w = 8 watts consumption. Obviously
> > this is going to become a really big problem, not only for PSEG as people
> > bite the bullet and purchase these things but it will also become a FCC
> > issue as well as they clearly exceed any radiated emission spec's for
> > consumer devices.
> >
> > For now, since we know the source of the problem, I am working out with the
> > homeowner a plan to perhaps go back to the halogen lamps. This problem needs
> > to be escalated to Home Depot, the FCC, and anybody else that should be
> > notified before the entire 2 meter spectrum is lost to licensed users in
> > this country and others."
> >
>