[Lowfer] Smoke alarm woes...

[Howell, Laurence J]

Just had a very positive neighbor experience - my LF and MF noise floor has been up a few dBs over the past month and thru DF came to a road about 3 miles away where I couldn't hear any MW stations because of raucous racket 50Hz and harmonic cracking and humming - so strong it was impossible to DF accurately - that bad

Fears of security etc -  I  ended up writing  a letter to both possible sources telling them who I was and my concerns over a faulty device/fire hazard and the fact that whatever it was jumped across the 240-/7200V line and effectively radiated into very large antennae - also the concerns that the interference was also strong in the NDB band and audible at the nearby airfield. 

This obviously got their attention and one of the neighbors phoned me up and on the phone using his breakers isolated the problem (he was dumbstruck when the noise on this MW portable stopped...)  He further isolated the problem to a 2 pronger DirectTv "drive" device for the satellite TV, put in a ticket and I drove passed the end of his road and all was quiet. Im guessing it was a faulty SMPSU, a very faulty one - I did manage to light up a 15W bulb via RF generated from a faulty Gould DC Troposcatter power supply 20 years back so they can shove out Watts!!

He and his neighbor were very thankful Id found a faulty and potentially dangerous device and thanked me for my persistence - Im just surprised that an adjacent neighbor who they said was a "ham" hadn't found it impossible to use 80 and 160 (but there again he may have been a VHFY and up person.

I also ran a parallel ticket with the power company - they are getting used to me :-)

Im using 10T of 77 (better with 75 perhaps)  material on all my inputs to the fire and gas panel , also garage door opener, Furnace 110V and Heat exchanger power - and 10T of J material on the Coaxial TV pedestal out in the road (mostly because of common mode VLF interference from the cable companies awful SMPSU driver power supplies 0.5 miles away)  plus a whole house EMC filter system  - luckily nothing burps or alarms on 137 or 500.

 I switched from DSL to Cable a year or so back - Originally DSL cable came out of the ground where I had two series DSL filters and straight into the modem in the garage, on a very short cable - if I didn't have the cable modem there the RF DSL noise  (Beit power or line  increased MF and LF noise a fair bit and without this mod I could slow down our Internet a fair bit with 100W on 500.

Laurence KL7L

-----Original Message-----
From: Lowfer [mailto:lowfer-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of pbunn
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 12:49 PM
To: Discussion of the Lowfer (US, European, & UK) and MedFer bands
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: [Lowfer] Smoke alarm woes...

Had a problem on 6 meters and a not so friendly neighbor called the FCC. They came to my house and looked things over and told the neighbor to buy a better VCR. Neighbor never spoke to me again. It is not your problem and don't accept it as yours. 

Pat
N4LTA

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 20, 2014, at 4:01 PM, Warren K2ORS <k2ors at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> Neil, 
his email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html