[RFI] Portable DFing at HF

[Jim Brown]

On Sat,8/13/2016 7:44 PM, Dave Cole wrote:
> Respectfully, I must disagree with you here.  I think that is absolutely
> the wrong way to handle this issue.

I also agree that what Kurt is suggesting is absolutely the wrong 
approach. And I also believe that it's wrong to assume that the grower 
is a "bad guy." Some may be, but many may not. I've known some very nice 
guys, even some hams, who have been known to cultivate some "weed," and 
a lot more who consume it. Here in CA, and in several other states, 
individuals are permitted to grow a certain quantity of weed for their 
own use, and in some states are permitted to raise some for sale. And 
this is a moving target -- laws on raising "weed" are being relaxed 
somewhere in almost every election cycle. When my mother was growing up 
in the coal fields of West Virginia and Kentucky nearly 100 years ago, 
moonshine was nearly as important to the local economy as coal. Now, the 
cash crop is "weed." Ditto for large parts of rural California.

A FAR better approach to ANY RF noise situation, whether it's a grow 
operation, a solar system, switching power supplies, or even a plasma 
TV, is to approach the person with the noise source starting with 
something like, "I need some help from you." Then tell them that you 
have been having serious noise problems in your ham station, that you 
believe that you have tracked it to something in their home, and that 
you would like the opportunity to work with them to solve the problem. 
In the case of a grow operation, tell him that you don't really care 
about his business or personal life, but you really need his help 
getting rid of that noise. Your neighbor may cooperate because he's a 
nice guy, or because he might realize that if you can track him down by 
the noise, the authorities may too. So killing his noise is to his benefit.

And go on from there.  If it's a grow operation, there are hams who have 
done lots of serious work on solving it with effective filters that can 
be applied to the grow lights and their associated electronics, which 
are the source of the noise. Two who have done the most are members of 
this reflector -- W0IVJ and W0QE. I've summarized some of their relevant 
advice and added some tutorial background in

http://k9yc.com/KillingReceiveNoise.pdf

with links to their work. There's even a link to a commercial product 
sold by W7LOZ based on W0IVJ's design.

73, Jim K9YC