[NLRS] The Tower After One Week

[Jonathan Fox]

I have had the tower up and working since last Wednesday and it has been quite
an education.

I have a 40 foot Universal Self Supporting with a Directive Systems 5el 6 meter
beam, an M2 2M9SSB and a Cushcraft 719B 432 beam.  I am also using the top of
the tower to support a 40,80,160 wire dipole.  I am going to install an M2
222-5WL in the spring.

My neighborhood had been quiet from an rf stand point with my low gain/no gain
VHF antennas, that all changed with the tower.  After getting the coax connected
I found an s-5 noise level on 50.125 when pointed east and a high noise level
without an s-2 meter reading when pointed north.  From Wednesday to Friday the
s-5 went to 10 over s-9.  The noise level on the HF vertical and the HF dipole
was between s-7 and s-9 depending on the band.  It was up to s-5 on 144.200
Saturday morning.  I could still null it out by pointing south.  This obviously
was not going to be something I could live with having spent so much time,
effort and money on the tower installation.  I spent about an hour Monday
morning walking around my neighborhood with my ft-290 (battery powered 2 meter
ssb radio) and a 4el 2 meter beam.  I found the offender and it was on top of a
utility pole about a block from my house.  I called NSP Monday morning and they
were out here this afternoon to let me know that it had been fixed.  A car had
run off the road and snapped a pole support cable that had flipped around and
landed on one of the lines.   The lineman didn't know how it didn't trip the
breaker but there it was.

The noise level on HF is back to where it was before, s-2 to 2-5.  I now have
the other noise problem.  Pointing south-east is dead quite on 50.125, +
144.200.  Pointing north is still a problem.  I see that the k-index is up to 5
this evening and I can hear some weak SSB with AU on 50.125 when pointing north
east, It starts to get louder when I turn the antenna north but just when the it
starts to becomes intelligible it gets masked but the noise.  The noise is about
s-2 which is not too bad compared to HF but ruins any chance at week signal
reception.  This noise sounds more like static from an electric motor than the
noise from the power line which had more of a buzzing quality to it.

With the big noise take care of it is now time to track down the smaller noise
which will be more difficult since that direction is the shopping center with
Target and Best buy.  I don't know how this is going to turn out but if the
problem is in the shopping center it is going to permanently prevent me from
working any weak stations to the north.  This may also explain why I have such
trouble working Europe on HF when other stations in the area are working that
direction.  They probably have much better antennas than me also.

Well that's the news from here.  Off on another adventure tomorrow to see what
other rf sources are around.

73, Jon
W0AMT