Topband: Home Depot LED bulb interference.

[Garry Shapiro]

George,

I suspect your question at the end was tongue-in-cheek. We know from 
long experience with other notorious consumer noise sources---e.g. 
plasma TV's, cheap dimmers, touch lamps, fish tank heaters, 
thermostats--that the FCC has been neither active nor timely in 
exercising its enforcement prerogatives. Some of this is probably due to 
the disparity between congressional mandate--i.e. "do this"--and 
funding, but we have had little indication of the government's interest 
in pursuing Part 15 violations, especially against imports of dubious 
quality.

I fear we are facing a tsunami of RFI, speeding toward us as a perfect 
storm of "modern" lighting. I have in the past laid in a supply of 
relatively quiet dimmers and replaced many in the neighborhood. But CF 
and LED bulbs will be ubiquitous and it is likely to be impossible to 
deal with this problem---unless we can generate pressure on the FCC to 
enforce Part 15.

Garry, NI6T

On 4/5/2012 4:10 PM, GeorgeWallner wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 16:01:12 -0400
>    "Mike Greenway"<K4PI at BELLSOUTH.NET>  wrote:
>> I wondered how long it would take before they started
>> selling some RFI
>> generating lighting.  Soon we can have a complete
>> neighborhood of RFI
> I have tested compact fluorescent bulbs a couple of years
> ago and found that they were noisy. I have not tried to
> quantify the level of noise emitted, but it was about S5
> on my K3 at a distance of about 4 feet using a one foot
> wire for antenna. I have stayed with incandescent, but my
> neighbor has installed over 50 of them on his house. The
> noise coming from that direction (NW) is significantly
> stronger than what I get from any other direction. Since
> he has installed the CF (and many LED) bulbs, I have not
> made one JA QSO! Fortunately, my DHDL, which looks towards
> EU (NE) completely blocks the noise and I am still able to
> work Europe.
>
> On the other hand, I have LED lights installed on my dock,
> which is only about 20 feet to the East of the RX antenna,
> but these LED lights are driven by well filtered drivers
> in metal boxes. No noise from these lights can be
> detected.
>
> It seems to me that we have a very serious threat from
> noisy "switched" light sources (and other digital noise
> generators, like Variable Frequency Drives) that have not
> been properly filtered. I am wondering the if the LED
> bulbs bought from Home Depot meet FCC Part 15 specs. Were
> they marked so?
>
> George, AA7JV
>
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