[TowerTalk] Re: [Tower Talk] Noise that won't go away

[Pete Smith]

At 02:40 PM 12/31/97 -0400, Jack Goforth wrote:

>To make a long story short, the problem was found to be in my 
>kitchen light ckt. My Kitchen lights have two switches that will 
>turn them on and off from either side of the room. I noticed when 
>the switches were in one condition, that is, switch no.1 up and 
>switch no.2 down, I had noise. If the switches were reversed, 
>no.1 down and no.2 up, the noise went away.
>


When I lived in a townhouse community, I identified three standard, garden
variety 72 cent silent light switches (in two nearby houses) that were the
source of tremendous noise signals on 75-80 meters.  Unlike many such
sources, these were not broadband, but seemed to consist of a very rough
carrier around 3760, another at 3520, and "sidebands" of noise below both
center frequencies.  I've never been able to figure out what electrical/RF
mechanism could be responsible, but in all three cases, when I replaced the
switches the noise went away.  In one case, the switch was on an
incandescent bathroom light circuit, and the noise was present only when
the light was OFF.  In the other, it was both switches on a 3-way
incandenscent kitchen light like Jack's, with similar correspondence
between switch position and noise.

RFI is FUN (not).

73, Pete Smith N4ZR
n4zr@contesting.com 

"That's WEST Virginia.  Thanks and 73"

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