[ICOM] problem with new electric utility meter??

[MikeDoolin at aol.com]

As someone who has been licensed since 68 but just getting back into the 
hobby after a 3 decade+ absence, I have been lurking on this list for many months. 
I bought a used Icom 728 last year and put it on the air and have been having 
a great time since. And thanks for all of the great advice and comments.

Now I have a concern: I took my 728 to my cabin in the Adirondacks last 
weekend and after re-hoisting my G5RV back into the air (after a winter crash) went 
on the air. I worked a bunch of folks on 40 M CW (at my painfully slow "do 
you still remember how to do this?" speed) and all was well. Then I switched to 
20 M, tuned up FB and tried SSB at about 14,200 ±. My radio went nuts! I had 
huge amounts of audio feedback, the radio was "hot" with RF and the audio 
distortion was incredible. The fwd power had dropped like a rock and the SWR was 
extreme.

I should note that the G5RV/728 combo had never given me a minute’s worth of 
trouble.

I went outside and looked around but the only thing I saw that was unusual w
as that I had a new electric meter installed, courtesy of my utility company. 
As luck would have it, my next door neighbor works for the utility and he told 
me that I now had a new-fangled meter that automatically sent usage data by RF 
to a truck that would cruise along the highway about 1/4 mile from my cabin. 
He didn’t know much more than that but promised to find out if there was any 
connection between the new meter and the radio problem. The G5RV feedline is 
within a few feet of the meter, but that had never been a problem before.

Internet research tells me that this new Schlumberger Centron meter has a 
little RF transmitter inside it (a Ramar Transpondit) running at between 902 and 
928 MHz, but that is all I have been able to find out. I never pretended to be 
much of technician, but simple math tells me that there is no easily-found 
multiple between 14 MHz and the freq of the meter, at least none that I can 
find. And I have no idea how much RF the meter is putting out. But it certainly 
seems as if this new RF-based meter is causing the problem.

Does anyone on the list have any experience with this sort of situation? I’d 
really like to operate on 20 but don’t know where to start to solve this.

Thanks for the help!

73s

Mike Doolin, KC2TP (ex WB8CDU, one of the original Hams at Heath from 68-74)