Topband: Plasma TV noise

[Rob Atkinson]

You can buy a TV for the neighbor and if he cooperates that's fine.
But they don't always cooperate.  Sports fans like plasmas because
they have no latency effects in fast live action.  And sports live
action when the screen is constantly changing is when they blast out
the most noise.

The screen radiates because it is the nature of plasma.  Every little
pixel is a gas bubble that is fired by around 10KV to ionize the gas
inside to emit light.  It's a matrix of thousands of arcing
electrodes.  The h.v. supplies are often unfiltered and their noise is
coupled to power lines.  If the TV is wired to the phone and internet
to display in-coming call ID when the phone rings, out goes the noise
on the phone lines.  Now you are surrounded.

You can buy the TV if they'll go along, but what's next--grow
lights...solar panels...variable speed furnace motors...

You can't control everything and if you can't move to a QTH where you
can establish a 500 foot buffer all around your antennas, you are left
with trying to control how this RF gets into your systems.   So far,
I've had pretty good success with a pair of RF Pro-1B loop antennas
and the DX Engineering NCC-1 phasing box.  It won't solve everything
but it knocks the noise level down to where it seems like it's the
year 1995.  But for those of us with these problems, the days of
hearing QRP stations is probably coming to an end.  Low band hamming
is going to eventually become a luxury for those with a lot of land.
I know hams who have already abandoned the low bands.  The broadcast
industry trade associations are trying to get action but it is
probably too little too late.  The FCC has not done enough to protect
and defend the spectrum in the U.S. that is HF and lower.

73

Rob
K5UJ