[TenTec] Power Pole noises

[WA3FIY]

Randy,  

I thought for a minute you were going to say that Anderson 
Power Poles are noisy!   Whew!   Glad it was power company 
...........oh........ never mind!   :-)

Seriously, I just got a high line noise fixed here after many 
months of grief.  Short version of the long story is that on a 
nearby 33Kv (or so) line, the conductors were arcing through the 
line insulating jacket to the cable clamps holding the line to the 
pole insulators.  A lineman told me that the jacket was split at 
the clamp and showed signs of burning.  He found many such 
points, don't know just how many.  They replaced the clamps with 
some "old fashioned" types that had a small spike that 
penetrated the insulating jacket, making electrical connection, 
line conductor to clamp.  Hmmmm....?

I had that noise on and off for nearly three years.  (I said it was 
a long story :-)  The line noise sometimes reached 10 to 20 db 
over S9, usually around S9.  Since I wanted to operate, I 
experimented with my stash of rigs and found that the old Ten 
Tec's with hardware noise blanker were best.  Rigs like the 
Triton IV and Argosy were especially good.  (That Triton IV is 
really an amazing radio considering it's age)  Another very good 
rig was an old Hallicrafters SR-400A with a real and fully 
adjustable noise blanker.

The newer Ten Tec's, especially those depending on software 
noise blankers were only slightly better than rigs with no noise 
blanker at all.  Of those, the Argonaut V and Pegasus/Jupiter 
were somewhat better than the Orion Classic running V2 
firmware.  The Orion hardware blanker was OK but quite up to 
the Triton.

Of course, using the noise blanker caused cross modulation 
problems on every rig I tried.

I think the manufactures still need hardware noise blankers as 
near the antenna port as possible.  Software has a long way to go 
from what I saw, or is that heard?

73,

-Lee-
WA3FIY

On 9 Jun 2008 at 12:54, Randy Hargenrader wrote:

> Was "band conditions"
> 
> I wanted to weigh in on this since I have had some success with dealing 
> with a problem at my old QTH.  (the new QTH has underground wires so few 
> issues with that)
> 
> I had an S9 noise on most bands when the weather was clear.  During a 
> downpour and for a little while afterwards, the noise was much less.  
> The short version of the story is that after I identified the pole as 
> the noise source using my FT817 and a small directional loop the power 
> company made a visit to the scene of the crime.  Turns out that the 
> hardware that goes through the pole to hold things together up there was 
> the noise source even after several tries to tighten them.  (BTW, the 
> rain water made the connection better, lessening the noise)
> 
> That is when I learned that there is a lot of energy surrounding even 
> the "low" voltage wires that serve a neighborhood.  Any bad connection 
> became a non-linear junction and made a great noise source.  The energy 
> was coupled to the hardware via the ground wire that ran the length of 
> the pole.  To solve the problem, the crew cut the ground wire completely 
> away from the hardware.  Before you give them "heck", he explained that 
> they don't bond everything like that anymore.  Seems it causes more 
> trouble than it solves.
> 
> Not long after that, I was called on to find another noise source for a 
> ham across town.  It turned out to be a vine that had grown up almost to 
> the top of a pole but it wasn't touching anything yet.  Just its 
> presence in the "field" caused it to have arcing to the grounded guy 
> wire it was growing up.  BTW, don't try pulling that stuff off the guy 
> wires yourself!  Not a safe thing to do.
> 
> Obligatory TT content:  I worked Hawaii the other night on 10 meters 
> using my Orion.  Note to TT:  The band scope is just fine.  Fix some 
> other stuff.
> 
> 73,
> Randy
> K4QO
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> 
> 
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