Power off... a good thing

DPD1 · #1 (**permalink**) 03-31-2009, 09:21 PM

The power went off today for a while. I decided to check the HF out while it was off... Wow, what a difference. No neighborhood noise = great reception. Heard about 5 mainsail calls in just 15 minutes or so. Usually it's a struggle to hear anything in an hour.

Shortwavewave · #2 (**permalink**) 03-31-2009, 10:14 PM

I bet that was fun, Boy would it be nice to have a block or two go out of power for a while LOL.

carmelof · #3 (**permalink**) 04-01-2009, 02:21 PM

I had the power go of in my house a few times and with just a small piece of wire running to the fence picks up better reception than my hf antennas & thats why i lost a lot of intrest in hf due to electrical noise and other intereference.

Regards Lino.

DPD1 · #4 (**permalink**) 04-01-2009, 03:11 PM

Yeah, until it's gone, you don't realize what a difference it makes. Especially now when a lot of the new buildings are getting pre wired for networks, and computer based security systems and all this other stuff. And of course the guys they contract use the cheapest stuff they can find. I even noticed the higher bands are getting more and more interference from stuff like that now... What use to be pager problems is now replaced by all kinds of weird data control and telemetry stuff for all the wireless devices people have now.

brandon · #5 (**permalink**) 04-01-2009, 03:37 PM

Oh yeah! We had a power outage a month ago and I fired up the Icom IC-R75 and was hearing all sorts of stuff normally buried in the noise. Europe on 80 meters was booming in and hearing stations that many hams with real antennas were having trouble with. Then listened to the aero bands and could hear aircraft taling with Tokyo, Nadi and Auckland loud and clear with absolutely no noise whatsoever. Made for a great evening until the lights came back on.... then it all went away

a29zuk · #6 (**permalink**) 04-03-2009, 08:02 AM

Yes! A couple of years ago the power went out for about a day and a half. I had a lot of fun keeping a fire going in the fireplace and doing some great Dxing.

kb2vxa · #7 (**permalink**) 04-03-2009, 04:33 PM

Heh, a few years ago power went off over half the county and it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Now note my QTH, when I lived in the southern part of the county it was that way all the time. Like they say in the commercial... location location location. I'm looking to get back there again only for a knotty logistics problem, oh well.

OceanaRadio · #8 (**permalink**) 04-03-2009, 05:56 PM

After hurricane Isabel, when over 4 million customers were without power, the background noise on MF and HF were absolute zero here. One of my long-wire angtennas knocked out of a tree had better performance lying on the ground thatn it ever had (pre-storm) when it was 70' in the air.

If you notice a big difference when only your own home (or a neighborhood-sized outage occurs), you have noise issues that might be manageable with a different style of antenna, better grounding, and the addition of ferrite/toroidal chokes on your power and data cabling. Some power utilities have great records of assisting cutomers in isolating problems with the utility's transmission lines, and some could care less. It's their loss when noisy lines are leaking a lot of energy and it can't hurt to raise the issue with your local provider if you suspect that is a cause. Just clean up your own noise first ;-)

R/
Jack

kb2vxa · #9 (**permalink**) 04-03-2009, 10:27 PM

Well, you are right and you are wrong. Power lines believe it or not are seldom an issue, case in point: mine. A portable SW radio proved in every case except my quiet location of course the racket was coming from unknown sources inside the building and the neighboring houses. Standing anywhere outside away from them, even directly under HV feeders there was barely the occasional crackle. You can clean up your own place but still there are the neighbors, good luck with them especially since they don't experience such things and couldn't care less about someone else's problems.

So maybe now you have guessed why that location was so quiet but if I really have to tell you guys... no immediate neighbors. If you want a quiet listening post you need at least a couple acres between you and the noise sources.

Thayne · #10 (**permalink**) 04-04-2009, 12:41 PM

Juice went off here about an hour ago; first time the generator my wife bought for Y2k fired up for real.

It is only a 4 block area out, some tree branch sagged from snow & blew a primary fuse; I called Xcel energy to tell them how easy it would be to fix, but you can never talk to a live person.
I am kinda glad it happened because the frequency was a little off so I used my Fluke meter to set everything right on. I found the service manual PDF on the internet a few years ago so it is a piece of cake if you know how to do it.

lanbergld · #11 (**permalink**) 04-04-2009, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kb2vxa

Heh, a few years ago power went off over half the county and it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Now note my QTH, when I lived in the southern part of the county it was that way all the time.

Warren, Maybe you lived near Millville NJ? Sort of near that? There's a little 50W beacon I receive pretty well here in Richmond, from that QTH. Its on 363 kHz.

But more on topic, I'd solved my inner-city downtown electrical noise problems simply by using quad-shielded RG-6, both as lead ins and as the antenna. Completely squelches all RFI here, yet radio signals come through. Especially on 160 meters, which now comes in better than 80 meters.

Yeah I know I'd posted that many times before, but I think its worth it. Quad-shield RG6 for all connections has provided a magic cure for me here. A simple & inexpensive one at that.

Larry Lanberg
Richmond VA

DPD1 · #12 (**permalink**) 04-04-2009, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lanbergld

Warren, Maybe you lived near Millville NJ? Sort of near that? There's a little 50W beacon I receive pretty well here in Richmond, from that QTH. Its on 363 kHz.

But more on topic, I'd solved my inner-city downtown electrical noise problems simply by using quad-shielded RG-6, both as lead ins and as the antenna. Completely squelches all RFI here, yet radio signals come through. Especially on 160 meters, which now comes in better than 80 meters.

Yeah I know I'd posted that many times before, but I think its worth it. Quad-shield RG6 for all connections has provided a magic cure for me here. A simple & inexpensive one at that.

What's your actual antenna design you're using?

kb2vxa · #13 (**permalink**) 04-05-2009, 02:13 PM

Message received and understood Larry but I think Dave's question may be a little vague to the average reader. In your case the transmission line picking up garbage seems to have been the bigger problem than antenna design although it plays a major point. In an ideal antenna system the line won't leak at all the currents being equally balanced, yours like most is less than ideal so you rely on shielding. If all goes well balanced open wire feeder, common ladder line or coaxial open wire line is an excellent choice but things seldom go well... right?

Dave, thanks for the can of worms (;->) and I hope we can get some knowledgeable discussion on it. There are "low noise" antennas but they depend on sound engineering principles and careful attention to design so here's hoping there can be a minimum of those "I just threw a wire up around the room and it worked." sort of comments. Let's have something we can really sink our teeth into and the noobs actually learn something, with any luck I'll learn something too, I'm tired of playing Mister Know It All around here. (;->)