[TowerTalk] FW: Weekend from hell

[Jim Rhodes]

Back when the big satellite antennas were the next big thing our neighbor 2
doors down the street bought one. If I remember correctly I was only using
wire antennas for HF at that point. One evening I was just checking into a
local repeater net when I got a call from said neighbor telling me that I
was interfering with his satellite reception. I was running less than a
watt from my handheld at the time. Not wanting to irritate the neighbor I
shut the thing off and went back to what I was doing on the computer
thinking I would check into it in a day or two. Having young children and
working long hours it was actually a couple of weeks before I thought about
it again. Until a got a nasty in the mail from the FCC wanting to know what
I was going to do about the interference I was causing. So I called the
neighbor and asked him what was going on and why he thought it was me. He
said he called the company that sold him the setup and mentioned that there
was a ham in the neighborhood so they told him that that was the problem
without a doubt. So he called me and complained. I then asked him to tell
me when he was having problems and he said almost every evening starting
around supper time and often going on for a couple of hours, in fact he was
having interference right now as we were talking on the phone. Instantly I
told him that that proved that I was not the cause of his problem. He says
"What do you mean?" To which I replied "I only have one mouth and it is
occupied with talking to you on the phone. How could it also be talking on
the radio at the same time?" My reply to the FCC went along the lines of
"His times of interference coincided with my operating times on one
occasion only. So what I am going to do about his interference issues is
not a *** **** thing." Never heard anything further from either of them
again about it. The neighbor did turn out to be a good friend over the
years though. Drove a concrete truck and got me a good deal on the concrete
for my first tower base.

On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 11:09 PM Matt <maflukey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Since this thread has somewhat morphed into a series of entertaining RFI
> stories, I thought I would chime in...
>
> Many years ago, my newlywed wife and I rented a home in an older West
> Houston neighborhood.    None of the original residential electrical
> services in that area were grounded.   Upon setting up a makeshift shack
> with a tall ladder line fed doublet antenna over the house, I proceeded to
> participate in the CQWW running about a KW of power.    Within an hour, my
> wife came out knocking on the shack door wanting to know why here hairdryer
> was "talking to her"!    I have no idea how or why, but I can confirm that
> her hairdryer, when turned on while I was transmitting, somehow detected
> artifacts of sideband audio modulation and buzzed in synch with the audio.
> Later that same day, my dear wife answered the front door to receive the
> wrath of our outraged neighbor, wanting to know if that large wire antenna
> over our house had anything to do with her son's remote control car
> becoming
> "possessed" by a demon.   The poor kid was terrified.    Needless to say,
> that was the end of contesting activities at that QTH....
>
> 73
> KM5VI
>
>
>
>
>
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