[Lowfer] * BPL *

[Steve Dove]

Greetings, radio-heads,

Well, I took this morning off and drove the hour-and-change up to Emmaus, just outside 
Allentown PA.  Took with me a little short-wave portable, thinking that if I drove around 
there enough I might come across some BPL noises.

And I did.

Just cruised down the main drag, and sure enough in the middle of town, there it was.  
Didn't take any finding at all.  It takes the form (at least this variant does) of irrythmic 
clicks, splatches and noise bursts, discernable between 3MHz and 18MHz, 'peaking' 
especially badly around 6MHz-ish..

Is it bad?  Near the power lines (it was easy to trace which ones were carrying it) and in 
the driveways of properties connected thereto it is bad.  How bad?  80, 40, 30 and 20 
meters would be a waste of space  -  as good as unusable.  Normal noise-blankers have 
little or no effect, and I'd struggle to figure out how to get rid of it in a dsp solution.  All but 
the strongest shortwave broadcasters were affected;  definitely a less than satisfactory 
listening experience.  The ones which weren't affected were the near-in single hop 
behemoths not targeting NA anyway, or the funda-extremist types who do but pretend not 
to.  Anything worthy of the name DX would be scratched up or buried by the BPL noise.

As far as I could tell, the BPL had not been filtered to notch out any spectral lumps;  it's 
like they didn't even care.

Folks, this is serious shit.

If you haven't thought what you're going to tell the FCC for their NOI, you have until next 
Wednesday.

        Happy days,

                Steve        W3EEE