Topband: roasting earthworms

[N7DF]

the morning after a wind and lightning storm i found that i had a 20 over nine power-line noise problem on 160 meters  on my triband beam it peaked north east on 20 meters     i waited a couple of days to do anything about it because i knew that our small electric cooperative was overwhelmed with repairs but when there was no improvement i took it on myself to try to locate the problem  tuning my car radio to a blank space between two stations on am i drove north on the main road up our canyon   about a mile north the noise became very loud on the car radio and as i approached a side road it became overwhelming  as soon as i turned on the side road i saw the problem  the lower neutral wire was down and lying on the ground between the first two light poles on the spur line going down the road   i checked the first pole beyond the break and found that i could get a spark off the ground wire on the side of the pole   i called the electric cooperative and they sent out a crew and strung a new line between the poles   surprisingly none of the four residences on the quarter mile long line past the break had reported the downed line and had not experienced an outage of electric service  the 7200 volt transformers at each residence had been connected to the neutral side of the transmission line through the ground wires on the individual poles even though the ground conductivity here in the desert is extremely poor  after the new wires were installed the noise from that source was significantly reduced