-106dbm noise floor. Is this the new normal for VHF?

[speedway_navigator]

We put a VHF paging xmtr in a VFD station, while we were waiting for the tower crew to get done the chief stopped in to see how things were going. He's an electrician and was changing out ballasts as we ate lunch.
The crew finished and we did test pages, a guy called the station and said he got paged in his basement for the first time ever.

The next day we got a panic call about not getting pages on station but it was gang busters everywhere else. We remembered the light ballasts which the chief finished after we left and told them to turn off the lights. No more missed pages.

 

[AM909]

Pagers at the same station as the paging transmitter were getting interfered with by ballasts? That's hard to imagine.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Most new ballasts for fluourescent lamps are electronic, not transformer based. They're SMPS. Noisy as hell.

 

[12dbsinad]

Most new ballasts for fluourescent lamps are electronic, not transformer based. They're SMPS. Noisy as hell.

People still use fluorescent lights?

But yes, they are insanely noisy

 

[speedway_navigator]

Looking for my research notes on this but the FCC RFI limits are less restrictive for commercial ballasts than residential.
The ARRL filed some complaints with the FCC in 2015. I heard the capitol police had problems in their / "our house" when green ballasts were put in, not sure how that was handled, probably had to use the residential units.

In this station the xmtr was in the kitchen / dinning room with the fluorescent lights.
These FCC NOVs are 700 MHz.

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-13-1584A1.pdf

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-13-2077A1.pdf