[ADXA] power line blues

[Jussi Eloranta]

Hi Stan,

On 3/22/26 11:59 AM, Stan Stockton wrote:
> I’m not sure what you have up but I know you have some Yagi antennas.  Those antennas should have pretty sharp nulls off the side.  I would determine the general direction using the back of the antenna and then determine the exact direction with the side null.  If your antenna is pointed at 300 degrees, for example the null would be at 30 degrees or 210.  Check it on a couple different antennas to see that they agree.  Then I would plot the exact direction with a line on a mapping program.  Depending on how far away the source is you may have a line that goes right through the pole on the map.  If you had a way to do something portable and have two lines from two starting points on the map, even better.  You could then go out with a portable radio and directive antenna, if possible, and confirm you have found it.

I can now actually hear it also on 6m. Unfortunately, there may be at 
least two separate sources. One that gives a constant hum and the other 
that is intermittent.

The hum is present on 160 but then dies off quickly, 80m hard to hear 
and then it can again be heard on 10 and 6m where the background noise 
is very low. So that leads me to think that it is located somewhat far 
away. This source is east from me (based on my 6m beam heading), along 
AR-115, which is about a mile away from me.

The intermittent source (knocking / clicking), is likely from the nearby 
chicken house power line. But that that is west from me. Kind of hard to 
locate exactly as it just disappeared again.

By the way, I found a nice way of tracking this on the radio. Set the 
radio to AM and run wsjt-x on it. You will see (well, hopefully you 
don't) nice lines of 60 Hz multiples. This is how I can detect it on 6m 
with 6 el yagi. Otherwise it is hard to hear by ear on 6m (on 160m it is 
loud).

Looks like I have some more driving to do. But there is definitely the 
raspy hum at the chicken house power line.

Jussi (aa6kj)