[RFI] RFI from arcing power pole 1.1 miles away (video capture of the arc)

[Pete Smith N4ZR]

Don's story reminded me - last weekend I, too, had bad arcing, though in 
my case it was only really bad on 10 and 15 (where I actually have some 
gain and directivity).  I sent an e-mail to Nick Bland, my BGE RFI guy, 
and he stopped by this morning (!) to tell me that he had identified a 
very similar failure to the one Don found, as well as another rotted 
crossarm nearby.  He expects that BGE will act quickly on the arcing 
cutout, perhaps in a day or less, since it may eventually fail open, 
while the crossarm will go on the maintenance schedule.  Anyway, great 
response time!

73, Pete N4ZR
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On 12/20/2021 2:36 PM, Don Kirk wrote:
> Utter disappointment Saturday morning when I was getting ready for the Stew
> Perry 160 meter contest when I noticed new RFI on 160 meters as well as 80
> meters to my East, and spent the morning tracking it down to a pole 1.1
> miles from my QTH. My portable flag with laptop based SDR receiver made it
> very easy to home in on the suspect pole using 80 meters, and then used 136
> MHz with 4 element Yagi and portable AM radio to isolate the bad pole from
> adjacent poles. Also used 438 MHz with 4 element Yagi and my laptop based
> SDR to confirm my findings.
>
> I went back last night (Sunday night) after sunset to see if I could see
> the pole arcing because I was pretty sure I knew where the problem was
> based on some very up close pictures I had obtained earlier in the day
> using a 14.1 mega pixel camera with 35X Optical Zoom. I went to the pole
> about 2 hours after Sunset and before even exiting the car I could easily
> see arcing where I thought it would be.
>
> Today I uploaded a video onto youtube that captures the arcing as well as
> some up close pictures that captures the hardware problem on the pole. Here
> is a link to that video for those interested.https://youtu.be/-iU1wbb8Na0
>
> It never ends, but at least this case was obvious.
>
> 73,
> Don (wd8dsb)
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