Topband: Power Line Noise (long)

[Brad Anbro]

Hello T-B'ers,

I have power line noise at my QTH that is causing me a
lot of grief on 160 meters. At 1.815 Mhz, the noise is a
continuous S9, when the rig is in the AM mode. The 
noise is not as noticeable on 80 meters.

A couple of years ago, I also had some line noise and
the electric utility that serves us came out & did a
"sweep" of the area. A couple of noisy poles were
found, about 1/2 mi. down the road & east of us. He
showed me the problem poles.

The problem was that the poles did not belong to the 
utility that serves our QTH. We are served by Rock Energy,
out of Wisconsin. The poles belonged to ComEd (Com-
monwealth Edison), which serves Illinois & other states.
I called ComEd and they did NOTHING. The noise
eventually went away.

Now that it's back, I went down to the poles with a portable
AM radio and could pick up the noise when I got close to
the poles.  One of the poles had a ground wire coming 
down from the top of the pole and had a protective
covering that was damaged, leaving the ground wire
exposed. With the radio on, I moved the ground wire
around & the radio went nuts. I might also add that
my directional Beverage antennas confirmed that the
noise was coming from the NE - the direction of the
suspect poles.

I then took out a "noise receiver" that I'd built from an
article in QST (March 2001). The noise receiver is a
TRF receiver set to pick up a frequency (AM) in the
130 MHz band. The receiver picked up aircraft traffic
out of the Rockford, IL airport, which is 25 miles SSW
of my QTH. But it picked up NO noise from the poles.

I went back to my shack & again checked 1.815 MHz.
The noise was still a continuous S9 in signal strength.
That told me that harmonics of the noise were not carry-
ing up into the 130 MHz. freq. range of the noise rcvr.

At our previous QTH, 3-1/2 miles south of our present
one, we were served by ComEd and I had severe line
noise there. I couldn't get ComEd to do anything about 
it. I tried to get a few organizations involved in the problem.

I contacted the Illinois Commerce Commission, the
Citizens' Utility Board (a citizens' public utility watch-
dog organization), the ARRL and the FCC. In an e-mail
that I had rcvd from the FCC, they told me that they had
a list of hams in Illinois that also had line noise problems
with ComEd's equipment and that ComEd hadn't done
anything to get the matters resolved.

I was assured by the FCC that they were "working on it"
and that something WOULD get done. Well, no one did
ANYTHING. We finally moved and are served by a
different utility. But 1/2 mile down the road, the area is
served by ComEd!

If anyone has any ideas on how I can pin-point the
exact source of the noise, I would sure appreciate
the information. Thank you in advance.

73, Brad, N9EN