I need opinions on this RFI

I ask here in the Amateur forum because I feel HAMs have a good ear for RFI stuff. Is this power line RFI to your best amateur ear? It started almost two months ago and is 24-7! I put in a call to PG&E 5 days ago and started a case after I did due diligence troubleshooting the QTH. The r71a is running on the Wellbrook loop but it still gets killed badly. The Delmonico set to SW out in the kitchen gets it across the SW bands just off 5' of the tape measure! This RFI does not affect MW at all. Just the whole darn HF spectrum.
Here is video of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_OpICNHr_c&feature=youtu.be
Thanks for any help!

Yes it's power line noise. Probably a bad insulator or loose hardware on a pole causing it. Notice how the noise blanker reduces it but doesn't take it out completely.

It would be nice to use a spectrum analyzer to analyze it better but it sure does sound like arcing power lines. A spectrum analyzer would easily tell you the entire range it covers and if it tapers off at high freqs like power line noise or if its confined to specific bands with a sharp cutoff, something that BPL would do.

You could take your loop antenna and a receiver around the neighborhood and see if it can be pinpointed or a VHF receiver that will do AM and a small Yagi can also pinpoint a specific pole.

A good friend of mine has become really good at finding problem poles by taking a receiver around the neighborhood and smacking the poles (really hard) with a large sledge hammer. If you hit the pole making the noise it will usually change the sound of the noise, then he notifies the local power company of the suspected pole and they usually respond quickly. If you give them a general complaint with no pinpoint area they may not respond for a long time if at all.
prcguy

Have you had the opportunity to see if it diminishes or disappears altogether after it rains (yes, I know it's California).

I had a problem that plagued me for years in another location somewhat nearer to the ocean than I am now. As it was explained to me the salt from the ocean in the air would build up on the insulators and cause arcing. After a rainstorm, it would be quiet, and the problem would slowly build again over the span of several days.

That is definitely some heavy duty static. Ouch. Good luck!

Thanks all for the replies. nd5y thanks it gives me hope. If I filter and notch the heck out of AM I can get stuff but this is so strong it'll ride the carriers enough to annoy the ---out of me and I shut it down. Luckily SSB is good to go with filters.
I am gonna bug the crap out of PGE till they do send someone out here.
Scancapecod, we are supposed to get some decent rain here starting tonight (hopefully) so that'll be good for eliminating the ocean salt thing as a possibility.
prcguy, if I dial the r71a lo to hi, it starts around 3900kHz, gets VERY strong about 9600kHz all the way up to about 23000kHz, drops off between 24300kHz, picks up strong again at 25000kHz through 28500kHz. Just crazy!

I've lived with similar noise levels for years. I found several tools to be essential...

A rotatable shielded loop. I have one that works from about 40kHz to about 10 MHz.

An active noise canceller. I use the JPS ANC-4.

Using the loop for the main RX antenna and passing it through the noise canceller made me immune from just about any noise. I even found the combination to be effective for some skywave noise sources.

My preferred noise antenna to feed that port of the ANC-4 is a dipole fed with ladder line to a broad band balun, mounted as far from the loop as I can get it.

Thanks for the ideas zz. I have to admit I am a little pissed that the Wellbrook does not do a thing to null this noise. I may as well stick a wire back up there! I paid a lot of money for this thing because all I kept reading was how "quiet" it is and that it claims to "ignore" the electro side. Bull. Even aside from this huge noise, I still get plenty of other RFI on it that I got on a wire. Just venting sorry.
Would it do any good to put up a 1:1 balun near the loop aside from your ideas?

ridgescan said:

Thanks for the ideas zz. I have to admit I am a little pissed that the Wellbrook does not do a thing to null this noise. I may as well stick a wire back up there! I paid a lot of money for this thing because all I kept reading was how "quiet" it is and that it claims to "ignore" the electro side. Bull. Even aside from this huge noise, I still get plenty of other RFI on it that I got on a wire. Just venting sorry.
Would it do any good to put up a 1:1 balun near the loop aside from your ideas?

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Loops aren't perfect, but they can be quite effective. A lot depends on what the noise source is. They can be relatively immune to electric fields, but that's mostly a help for near-field noise sources.

Does the antenna exhibit a null at all? Most loops will have broad directional responses with relatively narrow notches. The idea is to aim the notch at the noise source. If the noise source is spread across a wide directional area, the loop will be less effective in eliminating the source, because the directional response is much, much, broader than the nulls.

You might try a balun and see what it does. I've had some success with noise reduction just by transformer coupling an antenna to a receiver. It might reduce or eliminate common-mode noise on the feedline. Try the balun both at the loop and at the receiver.

If all else fails, give serious consideration to one of the active noise cancellers. They can be amazingly effective. I've even used them in mobile installations to get rid of vehicle generated noise sources.

I may get the Timewave Technologies ANC-4 at HRO soon. I was looking at that for a while and from what you said I will probably get one. I may as well also get a new run of lmr240 with enough footage to do an inline "Ugly Balun" up there. Even if PG&E solves this thing I still will be vulnerable to more.
BTW I called them yesterday and a guy told me two "entities" within PG&E are kicking my case back and forth to see who wants to deal with it more.
I started a case on the 6th. He told me to call again in two weeks lol.

zz0468 said:

Does the antenna exhibit a null at all? Most loops will have broad directional responses with relatively narrow notches.

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I forgot to answer this part. The loop is highly directional in MW/LW but in HF it's slightly directional-not nearly enough to effectively null stuff away just slightly lessen it. I guess because it's up 50' from earth? I also get better SW reception off the broad side while getting better MW reception off the ends.

ridgescan said:

I forgot to answer this part. The loop is highly directional in MW/LW but in HF it's slightly directional-not nearly enough to effectively null stuff away just slightly lessen it...

Click to expand...

There might not be much you can do. It sounds like it acts like a loop at lower frequencies, and like a random chunk of metal as you go up in frequency.

Mine does that too, and it's pretty typical. A loop must be very small in terms of wavelength to exhibit deep nulls, and as you go up in frequency, that relative size becomes larger, and therefore less effective as a true loop.

A loop designed for full mw/hf coverage will not have ideal characteristics across it's entire bandwidth. That's why things like the Palomar loop antenna had different plug-in loops for various frequency ranges.

Thanks again zz

Is there a way that you can run your radio on a battery? If so, one test that I didn't see trying to read through the thread here is to kill the power to your house.

If the noise goes away, you can start looking for it.

If the noise stays with the house shut off, your at the mercy of the power company.

One trick you could try is to take a portable AM radio and walk the neighborhood. See if you can find an area where the noise peaks. That will at least narrow the search.

As other people have mentioned, the problem normally is caused by a dirty insulator or a cracked insulator. There is a chance that there is a loose connection in the distribution wires or at a transformer.

I had a problem here at my house with noise and was seeing power glitches. Several of my UPS units were going crazy beeping and the lights would flash. It got worse with high winds. I finally called the power company. They came and did a few tests at the house meter and my transfer switch for a generator. Then they put their bucket up and found a loose connection on the secondary side of the transformer feeding the house. Haven't had a beep out of the UPS units or have the lights flicker since.

Good luck with your noise problem.

ridgescan said:

...I paid a lot of money for this thing because all I kept reading was how "quiet" it is and that it claims to "ignore" the electro side. Bull...

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I meant to comment about this specific thing.

A small loop is non-resonant, and very small in terms of wavelength. Small enough that signal currents are the same throughout the entire antenna. It's essentially an inductor coupling to the magnetic field, and not very responsive to the electric field. This makes it excellent for noise rejection of nearby sources where the electric field is much stronger than the magnetic field. So, that claim is quite true.

Distant noise sources are full blown electromagnetic waves, however, and so a magnetic loop will pick up the magnetic component of the wave just as well as it would a real signal. So, in that regard, there's no relief unless the nulls are deep enough to null out the source.

Higher in frequency, the loop may still not be resonant, but there will be standing waves starting to develop on the loop conductor, which will destroy the directional characteristics of the loop. It begins to respond to the electric field as well as the magnetic field. This is why your loop works well at MF, but not so well at HF. The answer to that is a physically smaller loop.

Hey ridge I was going to suspect the pot growers again, but yeah the electrical pole makes good sense too

Timewave ANC-4 works wonders. I can shoot you some audio examples if you want to hear how it works.

ridgescan said:

BTW I called them yesterday and a guy told me two "entities" within PG&E are kicking my case back and forth to see who wants to deal with it more.
I started a case on the 6th. He told me to call again in two weeks lol.

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Ridge, this is all you can really do. Keep pestering them (but be nice) about your case. Another thing you can do to help is walk around with a portable and see if you can help to isolate the specific pole. It's probably within 1/2 mile of your location.

You might be able to drive around and find it that way -- if your vehicle doesn't generate any noise while driving.

You'll know when you find the right location as the noise will be super strong.

PS. Don't waste any money on noise-filtering/phasing/blocking devices as these won't help much.

Ridge

Here are Timewave ANC-4 samples.
Broadband noise (similar to yours): Rec-8.0625MHz_ANC-4-Filter.mp3

Here is ANC-4 dealing with different noise culprits.
Aftermarket iPhone charger vs New York Volmet on 3485 kHz: noise_cancelling2.mp3
Plasma TV vs San Francisco Radio on 5547 kHz: 5547-Noise-Cancel-ANC4-Part1.wav
Unid noise source vs the Timewave: another-sample.mp3
Another Plasma TV being noise cancelled: PlasmaTV.mp3

Good luck mate. Hope your able to get it resolved soon!

nickcarr said:

PS. Don't waste any money on noise-filtering/phasing/blocking devices as these won't help much.

Click to expand...

I couldn't disagree with you more. Installed correctly and operated with a modest amount of skill, I have been quite pleased with how well they work.

I lived in a location with power lines on two sides of the house, a noisy pole pig two houses down the street and a neighbor with mercury vapor lights in his yard. The evening noise level was 40db over S9 most nights.

The ANC-4 would make the noise level so low I could work DX on 160 meters and hunt LF NDBs.

Thanks Jim Brandon Nick for the replies. Jim and Nick, my r71a is in the bedroom, my r75 is in the livingroom-I killed all breakers to the QTH save for each of those rooms at a time to see if it was here-not here. Went up onto roof where I am at the same height with the power lines and held an old 27meg walkietalkie horizontally that lit up big with the RFI when pointed at those wires-especially near the corner where two streets' power poles intersect.
I even walked around the street with that WT with it held horizontally and got nothing from the school, hardware store, glass shop. I must've been a sight-the Asian plumbers were staring up at this big white guy walking around with an old CB walkie talkie
Brandon-it's hard to argue those ANC-4 samples! I'm sold. I know you had a RFI situation that all but shut you down there-and I presume this was your cure. Thanks for the help! That thing is impressive.

Ridge, do you have something portable AM that you can vary the size of the receiving antenna, or eliminate it easily? Something that would attenuate the received noise signal the farther you moved away form the source? This may get you closer to the problem line or insulator. It might speed up the power company if you could tell them which pole the noise is coming from. Just a thought.