[Elecraft] [OT] Street Lamps and RFI

[Fred Jensen]

My experience with two [a small sample] of street lamps, both owned by 
the State of California [CALTRANS], is that the lamps don't really 
matter much, it's the controllers ... what we used to call ballasts but 
that's archaic now.

One appeared to be a fairly old high-pressure sodium vapor lamp, and it 
emitted a steady buzz centered on 6 Mhz and spread from about 3 Mhz to 8 
Mhz.  It was about 3 km away and ran about S5-S6 on my K3.  A similar 
lamp maybe 4 km distant emitted nothing.

The other was what I believe a low pressure lamp.  It's problem was that 
it was failing ... very, very slowly ... and the controller [or ballast, 
your choice] would emit sharp spikes in a spectrum that ran from 160 
through 17 m as it continually tried to restart the lamp.

After multiple contacts to my state government, I gave up and we finally 
moved [not because of that :-)].  The failing one has not yet died, saw 
it last time through Auburn ... it does this day and night.

You might want to point your Association to 47CFR15, and their 
responsibility to prevent interference to licensed services.  They might 
care about that, CALTRANS never did.

73,

Fred K6DGW
Sparks NV
Washoe County DM09dn

On 6/9/2016 2:43 PM, KarlErb wrote:
> My condo association is planning to replace 1960's street lights to
> reduce energy usage.  Is there a reference or two that would help me
> educate our Board on best technology and why RFI should matter to
> them (right now, it doesn't)?
>
> Thanks for any input.
>
> Karl W3BF karlerb7 at gmail dot com