[TowerTalk] RFI

[jcowens1 at comcast.net]

I hope none of you experience what I am dealing with. My power utility hired an RFI engineering specialist to chase down an RFI noise that I have had, primarily on 160M, and some on 40M for a very long time. He traced it to a house about a block away from my QTH. The house owner refuses to cooperate and orders us off his lot. The RFI on 160M is 24/7 and at least S9+10db at 1.810 MHz. It isn't being radiated much into the atmosphere, but is propagating to my QTH over telephone wires. The power utility can do nothing as the source is inside his house and the have no authority beyond the entry point to the house. The line transformer acts like an RF choke so it is not on their wires. 

I am pretty sure it is one of the commercial ballasts being sold by the big box stores to residential customers, even though the devices are commercially rated and not supposed to be sold to residential customers. Wash state is a legal state for MJ, but only for certain purposes regarding growing it. No doubt, that is what is going on. I am not through pursuing a solution to this, but it is a PITA. I have been in touch with the ARRL on this and they are waiting from me to give them a name and address and they will try and get the FCC involved. I am not far from doing that. The RFI specialist has encountered problems like this before so a lot of us are going to encounter this over time 

John Owens - N7TK 

Celebrating nearly 60 Years in Ham Radio 
No. 1 DXCC Honor Roll