[Lowfer] LF noise

[Andy - KU4XR]

Doug:
 
I have been there before... Knowing the person, or being known by them is a great advantage to working
out a solution to the problem.... One HUGE problem with electric fences.... look for poorly connected,
loose, or NO ground connection at the generator box... I found one about 3 air miles away from me in
the past, and the owner knew me, and when I told them their fence was causing me lots of interference,
I showed him with a portable A.M. radio, and on my truck radio that it was coming from his fence..
His wife was at the door listening to our conversation, and when she heard the noise; she jumped into
the conversation, and told me she was hearing the same noise on her A.M. radio and could not listen to
one of her favorite programs.. I offered to look for the problem, and a possible solution, and they agreed..
I found the bad ground immediately, and asked him to turn off his charger... the noise of course went away..
Happy Wife !!! Now; fix the problem... the ground lug was not tight, so tightening it solved that issue, BUT,
for the ground; he had a 8 foot rod connected to it laying on the ground.. I told him it really needed to be driven 
into the ground to work, and it could cause a fire in the grass the way it was.. He and his son drove the rod
into the earth, and the interference was " almost " gone.. I was given permission to walk their entire fence
line with my radio, and a pair of linemans pliers.. I found numerous wrapped together connections that were
arching... you could see the arch.. proper splicing stopped that... The next door neighbor got in on the incident,
and found issues with his fence too... A much longer story shortened, when all was said on done, I was able
to make new friends who became radio friendly too, we fixed their problems, and solved my noise issues...
 
 
Not all situations will work that easy, truly; some people just won't care, and have the " well that's your problem "
attitude... When handled correctly ( diplomatically ), most individuals can eventually become cooperative...
 
 
In my own experiences, I have even befriended the local power company engineer by finding, and pointing
out specific locations of noise making power poles... Made his job easy for him...
 
Good luck with correcting the noise issues...73:
 

Andy - KU4XR - EM75xr - Friendsville, TN. USA
Coordinates: N: 35º 43' 54" - W: 84º 3' 16"
http://lwca.org/grabbers/ku4xr/
http://www.myspace.com/beaconxr
http://ku4xr.webs.com
http://lwca.org/community/YaBB.pl


----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas D. Williams <kb4oer at gmail.com>
To: "Discussion of the Lowfer (US, European, &amp, UK) and MedFer bands" <lowfer at mailman.qth.net>
Cc: 
Sent: Sunday, January 8, 2012 10:12 AM
Subject: [Lowfer] LF noise

We all have various QRM that we deal with on LF. The biggest offender at my
QTH is my next door neighbor's spark gap transmitter, aka electric fence.
It produces a pulse of RF about once a second, that covers from DC to about
3 MHz.

Below is a sample of what it sounds like in the daytime when I connect my
antenna directly to the PC sound card through a 50kHz LPF.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33457409/fence.wma

If a weed or something touches the fence, the noise is amplified tenfold.
She has given me permission to walk the fence and remove such things, a
win/win for us both.

Fourtunately, the noise blanker on the R75 is superb, and when it it turned
on, it eliminates almost 100% of the popping.

Doug KB4OER
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