Topband: Horrendous Local Noise

[Rob Atkinson]

>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).


The key thing is a transformerless appliance that puts noise onto the
power line from the utility and is reradiated by all above ground
wiring that is directly connected to the offender's service drop.
Here in the U.S. that would be every dwelling on the secondary winding
of the distribution transformer.   For the average ham, this would be
almost impossible to locate and deal with directly.  You found how
difficult it was.

Therefore, it would be extremely useful to find out what the officials
did to diagnose the problem.   What did they think when they heard it?
 What detail about it stood out to them?  What apparatus did they use?
 Exactly what did they do to track it down?

Once they found the source, what did they tell the homeowner?  Was the
device replaced?  Confiscated?   Were they ordered to stop using it?
And what was the appliance?

Folks, don't just let these opportunities to learn go by.  These are
valuable opportunities to become better educated so some of this work
can be done by us to save time.

73
Rob
K5UJ