Topband: Horrendous Local Noise

[Jeff Kincaid]

 Wow!  Not just one, but two jolly good fellows.  Congratulations!
Jeff W6JK

    On Friday, November 12, 2021, 03:27:20 PM PST, Roger Kennedy <roger at wessexproductions.co.uk> wrote:  
 
 Well I haven't been able to come on 160m for over a week, as I suddenly had
the most horrendous noise all over the band, S9 + 30 dB, all day and night,
every day !

I have tracked down rogue equipment in neighbours' houses over the years,
just by using a small AM radio and DF-ing, using the null on the end of the
internal ferrite rod antenna to show me the direction (you just need 2
bearings). But going out in the street this noise was coming from everywhere
. . . got loads of different nulls in different directions, depending on
where I stood.

I figured it must be a major fault with the underground mains cables, arcing
somewhere. (we have 415V 3-phase running underground over here, and just one
phase tapped off to each house, which gives 240V against Neutral.)

I called out the company responsible for maintaining the cables, and they
arrived within an hour. But they could find nothing wrong (they agreed there
could be arcing underground, but said they didn't have any equipment to
detect where the fault might be - they just rely on the power going off to a
particular house!)

So on Wednesday I called OFCOM to report the problem (like your FCC in the
USA). I figured it would be hard to get them to come and investigate, and
even then it would take weeks. But they were actually very interested on the
phone, and I emailed them a Log on the Thursday morning. On Thursday
afternoon the guy responsible for the NE of England rang me, and said he was
away on holiday for 2 weeks on Monday, so he would try and juggle
appointments so he could come up on Friday afternoon!

Well he drove the 100 miles up here and arrived with a colleague about 2pm,
spent a while in the shack listening to the noise, and monitoring it on
their equipment connected to my Top Band dipole. After about 45 minutes they
both went out in the street, and an hour later they came back to say they
think they had tracked it down. 

It actually turned out to be a faulty piece of equipment in a house up the
street . . . but not radiating directly - it was sending these huge spikes
back down the Mains . . . and then I guess the wiring in all the houses
along the street was then re-radiating the noise (which is why I couldn't DF
it properly).

I was absolutely delighted ! So a big thank you to Alan and Tony from OFCOM
for coming and sorting my problem so very quickly . . . I really never
expected such amazing service.

Roger G3YRO 


Regards

Roger Kennedy
Wessex Radio Productions

Tel: 0191 250 2715
Website: http://wessexproductions.co.uk

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