[RFI] Working with Utilities

[Charles Plunk]

I will make this my last post on the thread. Will just say good luck to 
anyone dealing with a defiant utility. Be prepared to spend endless 
hours, money on location equipment, your station basically useless for 
months, documenting, and digging in for the long haul. All to get them 
to do what is law anyway. The system seems to be by design to where most 
will just give up. Go park your car in the middle of a local ball-field, 
golf course, etc and see how quickly that impediment to that hobby gets 
resolved.


Oh, I never once reported a non-utility issue in my almost 20+ years of 
trying to get this 7.2kv run clean. I am happy now that mine seems to 
have finally come around. I do not know for sure but think much of it 
may have to do with a new CEO. Last spring, they immediately offered to 
send out an RFI location guy from their supplier and emails from the 
supplier were cordial too. But I am reluctant to do that as the last one 
they sent out was obviously not knowledgeable and had an attitude. Thus 
I found it myself with all my RFI location gear built up over the last 
20 years.


Sorry, its just frustrating to hear of other hams having these issues. 
Especially with the OP stating a 5 year wait. That is way beyond ridiculous.


Chuck

W4NBO




On 9/12/21 2:46 AM, Hare, Ed, W1RFI wrote:
> <So let me get this straight. If hams make false complaints then the 
> utility is ok to blow us off.>​
>
>  I never said it was okay, so i am not sure how you got that out of my 
> words.  What I did say is that if hams make complaints to utilities 
> about non-utility sources, it is very possible that the utility will 
> stop responding to those complaints, so it is pretty important to get 
> it right the first time.
>
> There are a few premises at play here.  First, th utility is 
> responsible only for interference  its equipment creates. Under the 
> rules, if they are causing harmful interference, it is their 
> responsibility to find it and correct interference they create.  Some 
> utilities do a great job at this. In other cases, they do not have the 
> equipment or skills to do this, so the process will generally go much 
> better of amateurs can find the source.  This also eliminates the 
> false report problem.
>
> Under FCC rules, power-line sparking and arcing sources are incidental 
> emitters. As such, they have no specific limits on radiated or 
> conducted emissions, just a requirement that the operator of 
> incidental emitters not cause harmful interference.  So all those 
> noises we hear driving around are not necessarily illegal in and of 
> themselves.  If they are causing harmful interference, then they are 
> actionable, but FCC generally does not consider transitory 
> interference to mobile operators to be harmful interference.
>
> Ed
>
>