[Lowfer] Progress comes to the boondocks

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 18:31:19 -0600

My new meter is as quiet as it was before they put it in. Now the darn cat
and dog heated water dishes are something else.

Mike>WE0H
http://www.we0h.us/lf.html

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On
Behalf Of Mike Staines
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 5:01 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [Lowfer] Progress comes to the boondocks

Lyle:

Two thoughts, although I am sure that you have considered both...

If the mains are carrying these signals, why did you only see it when the
new meter was installed at your house/farm? I would have thought that you
would have seen these signals after the main hub was installed and started
polling and, certainly, after other subscribers on that line had their
meters installed (unless you went first).

Second thought: You didn't mention if you tried to isolate if the noise was
coming in the RF port of the RX or conducted through the house wiring to the
AC input of the RX. *Perhaps* a line filter on the AC line will help.

Regards,
Mike
wa1ptc

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Lyle Koehler
> Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 5:22 PM
> To: lowfer reflector
> Subject: [Lowfer] Progress comes to the boondocks
>
>
> This afternoon a guy from the local electric utility came and replaced my
> old electric meter with one of the new-fangled remote reading units.
>
> Q: How does it work?
>
> A: It sends pulsed signals via the power lines to the central office.
>
> Q: All the time or just once a month?
>
> A: All the time.
>
> Q: Will it cause radio interference?
>
> A: We have had no complaints. (Why didn't that make me feel any better?)
>
> I now hear very strong pulsed noise across the entire LF (30-300 kHz)
> spectrum. The noise tapers off rapidly above 300 kHz, and is essentially
> gone by 500 kHz. Noise blankers in both of my receivers (IC-756PRO and
> IC-706) are fairly effective in suppressing the noise, to the
> point where I
> would be able to hear local LowFERs in aural CW mode. It is
> difficult to say
> how much effect this will have on weak-signal reception, but it certainly
> won't help! A composite picture showing Argo spectrograms of the noise in
> full-band and 3-second dot modes can be seen at
> http://www.qsl.net/k0lr/PLC-meter.jpg
>
> For these captures, the receiver was set to 185.000 kHz in USB
> mode. In the
> lower half of the full-band view, the IC-756PRO's noise blanker
> was off; in
> the top half it was turned on. "Ribbons" of noise appear at
> intervals of 60
> Hz. The screen capture in 3-second dot mode shows a zoomed-in
> picture of the
> noise spectrum with the noise blanker off. 300 Hz, the center of the
> display, corresponds to 185.300 kHz.
>
> I've already called the power company, and there is a possibility
> that they
> will re-install my old meter. However, there was some BS about an extra
> charge to send someone out every month to read it! An engineer from the
> power company is supposed to call me next week to discuss the problem. In
> the meantime, I may be doing a lot of transmitting and not much listening.
>
> If I lived in the big city, there would be one of those @#5&!! things on
> every house in the neighborhood. Things could be worse...
>
> Lyle, K0LR
>
>
>
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