[600MRG] Power Line Noise in the City

[Paul Signorelli]

 Power Line Noise in the City

    A few years ago when i had some terrible burping power line noise when I was operating 2 meters AM.  We had a City AM net with a lot of Gonset Communicators on 145.550.

AM is really susceptible to line noise interference. That noise will also mask out weak signals even if you are on FM but you may not notice it. It is very bothersome on 630 meters too.

   i called my old friend in the Power Company and he sent out a few guys to see what was causing the noise. i had found a noisy power pole with my AM Receiver and a 4 element beam. It was about 100 yards away. i showed the Linemen the spot and the 'engineer' had an

Ultrasonic Arc Detector. It had a little parabolic reflector that converted 40 kHz down to a baseband of regular audio frequencies. He confirmed the arcing noise with a little more angular resolution.  One lineman took a bucket truck up the side of the pole and hammered

in all the ground wire staples and got up to the metal cross arm support braces.

As soon as he hit the cross arm braces the noise stopped. The braces are metal and about 3 feet long and are attached to the pole with big metal screws.  He pounded the screws in a little more and the job was over. They changed my braces over to wooden braces.

You can see a video of cross arm installation at https://www.hbjinyong.com/steel-cross-arm/electrical-cross-arm/

   Years before we had an 8KV insulator crack and they found it the same way and replaced it.

That is just the history of the power line noise in my area.

   Yesterday i was talking to 2 senior power company  line men who each had their own bucket truck. They were interested in Ham Radio so i told them this story. When i got the 'Ultrasonic Arc Detector' they had a blank stare. They had no idea what it was or that our power company owns one that they could use on their job.

i told them they could buy one from MFJ,

https://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-5008

   Amazing  !!!

Paul   w0rw

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