[TowerTalk] Hi tension lines and QTH shopping

[Rick Karlquist]

A few comments on the recent discussion about shopping for a QTH vis a vis
high tension lines.  I spent most of the summer of '97 driving all over
central CA looking for property to buy for my antenna farm.  I noticed that
there was a Murphy's law of the real estate market as follows:  in scanning
a bunch of listings for 20 acre parcels, if any listing popped out like a
sore thumb (price too low, located in an area with mainly much smaller and
much bigger parcels, on the market a year, etc) it would turn out more
likely that not that high tension lines were very close to it if not
actually directly running above it.  Apparently, its not just hams who turn
up their noses at these lines!  These properties are just plain white
elephants.

Another addendum to Murphy's law is that any nice open space or nice
mountain top, that would be a great QTH because it is away from any
development, usually has high tension lines running through it.

I eventually bought 20 acres about 1 mile from high tension lines.  My SW
Beverage for Europe long path shoots right through them and I never have any
power line noise problem on it.  I do get some noise on my NE Beverage which
points in a direction where some conventional lines a couple of miles away
wipe out AM radio reception on the car radio when I am driving along the
road where those lines are.  Now if I drive right under the high tension
lines, the AM radio also gets wiped out but that is only within a few 100's
of feet.  BTW, since installing the Beverages, the power line noise issue
has become nearly moot, since they seem to have an immunity to it.

Any power line noise problems I have are mainly on 160 and to some extent on
80.  On the higher bands, I rarely hear power line noise.

Good luck with your real estate search.

Rick Karlquist N6RK


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