I agree, Dave's idea is a good one. 

K9YC describes such a technique in one of his articles, using a Kenwood TH-F6 HT which can tune from BC to a Gazillion GHz and listen in all the modes. Start low - work your way higher and higher. I bought it used on eBay specifically to track a source that was "everywhere" in the house wiring but showed up on multiple circuits when individual fuses were turned on and off. Traced it back to a garage door opener that had an internal battery backup, so stayed on for the "pull the fuse" tests. It was there when we bought the house and I had no idea it had that backup! A leaky circuit coupled RF into the wire for the remote switch over by the kitchen door, which wire ran alongside a bundle of house wiring circuits, and coupled RF into any of those that were powered up. Or something like that :-)

I love the utility of Dave's method which does much the same with a more common AM/FM radio. Great idea!  

Funny part is: I'll have to wait to try it: I have the HT but I haven't had an AM/FM portable in years.  

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! 

73 Chris NW6V

On Fri, Dec 24, 2021 at 9:15 AM Steve WD8DAS via CW <cw@mailman.qth.net> wrote:

That's a great idea, Dave - use the FM receiver with its whip as a probe to sniff out the exact offending device!


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Radio is your best entertainment value.
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-----Original Message-----
From: D.J.J. Ring, Jr. <n1ea@arrl.net>
To: sbjohnston@aol.com; CW Reflector <cw@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thu, Dec 23, 2021 10:09 am
Subject: Re: [CW] OT: What do about Power Line Noise?

Steve,

That is probably the best presentation I've ever seen on any subject.  Extremely well done.

I learned two additional tricks that I'll add here to supplement your presentation in the "locating the noise section:

Tune a AM-FM larger size portable radio with a larger ferrite bar antenna to a unoccupied frequency nearest 850 kHz as it seems that the receiver is most sensitive to noise at that frequency.

When using this radio to triangulate the location of the offending noise source, often the noise will peak around a cluster of possible objects: example: the noise peaks around the electric service entrance in the basement which is next to the oil burner and water heater which are all in close proximity to each other and the offending noise is extremely loud. It's here somewhere!

At this stage of noise detection, switch the receiver to FM, and extend the telescoping whip, finding a frequency that's unoccupied by a station, and move around with the whip trying to find a peak in the noise.  Usually an FM receiver is designed to reject this type of noise until it is extremely loud which it will be when it is nearest the noise source. In fact, when you get within one or two feet, you will need to retract the whip to continue to locate the noise. When the whip is fully retracted and the noise is still extremely loud and you're still unsure of the noise source, touch the whip to any metal of nearby objects, when you find the offending object, like in my case, a defective doorbell transformer, the noise will be overwhelmingly loud. 

73

DR
N1EA 

On Thu, Dec 23, 2021, 08:54 Steve WD8DAS via CW <cw@mailman.qth.net> wrote:

Power line noise is certainly a problem, but I believe the more common source of radio noise is from *inside* our homes and offices.  Here's a link to a presentation I did on this topic and ideas on tracking down the offending devices...



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Radio is your best entertainment value.
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