[RFI] ARRL to FCC...

[Donald Chester]

> From: Jim Smith <jimsmith at shaw.ca>

> Hmm... If you're in an illegal state would there be any benefit/risk in
> simply reporting your suspicions to the DEA along with documentation
> linking grow op lighting to RFI and your current RFI environment?

I think that would be opening a can of worms you would rather keep closed.

Not to condone breaking any laws, but I would much rather have someone in the house next door minding his own business and growing a little weed for his own consumption using a clean grow light, than someone growing flowers for his church altar using a noisy one. Besides, I don't want to start hearing of people having their doors busted down in SWAT raids because they had a crappy plasma TV or the wrong brand of grow lights illuminating their garden seedlings. And you certainly don't want to do anything to invite retaliation from people involved in a criminal enterprise. RFI is best left to the FCC if a government agency is to be involved.

But it wouldn't hurt to spread the word as far and as wide as we can via the mainstream media as well as through speciality publications like High Times, that RFI can be serious with many of the grow lights presently in use, and that this radiation can easily be pinpointed from a considerable distance away by anyone with a portable receiver including government agents, FCC and otherwise. Most of the people causing this particular RFI problem are likely to be a little paranoid to begin with, which we might as well exploit to the fullest while we can.

And as Ed said, the AM broadcast frequencies are close enough to the lower frequency ham bands that passing RFI to 160m or 80m as interference to the AM broadcast band wouldn't be stretching the imagination very far. Likewise, "broadcast reception" could include listening to the 19m short wave band to pick up the BBC World Service (IMO a more reliable unbiased news service that most local media), which is close enough to cover 20m interference, and so on.  Our local power company is very good about fixing noise problems if I pinpoint the exact source myself and report it to the right people, but they are not so good at tracking it down themselves. 

I have sensed a faint chuckle from power company personnel in the past when I reported line noise problems and mentioned "ham radio" in the conversation, so I always pass it off as causing interference to my broadcast reception since they seem to take BCI claims far more seriously. Perhaps this is a spin-off from the days of the CB boom, and like it or not, the majority of the public to-day wouldn't know the difference between amateur radio and CB nor even care. TV, movies and other entertainment media have left the public with an image of CB as something laughable, not to be taken seriously. Maybe not all power companies are like mine; YMMV.


Don, k4kyv