An so the Line Noise Saga begins . . .

[w1vtp]

I took on an increase in my line noise.  I've always had some line noise (faint) but not so much that it got in the way of my copying weak stations.

Preliminary steps:

1)  May 15, 2023.  Called Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) and registered my complaint.  A trouble ticket was generated.  I did not get any assurance that their line crew was going to "get 'round toit."

2) May 18, 2012.  I called again today to check on progress.  The only thing the person at the other end could say that, yes, there was a trouble ticket generated. When I asked if I could be advised when the crew was going to be out there or when they had come and gone I was told that they usually do not do that.  I insisted that they do and that after waiting a reasonable time, I was prepared to submit a complaint to the FCC.  That got a little more response out of the person. We'll see how things go.  Now that they have my "dander" up.  I am going to insist they resolve that low level noise also.

I have created a log of how things go.  I'll upload it here and update it by modifying the uploaded file - not posting it later on.  As Sherlock Holmes would say "There is
game afoot."

Al

[K5UJ]

That's too bad Al.   I have what I think is a TV set around my place dumping buzzies on the high bands and making it tough to copy weak signals.

My experience with line and street light noise is that I get a lot faster cooperation if I can give them a pole to focus on.

If you can DF the source (finding the trouble spot is a whole separate field of expertise) that may get them out faster.

There are all kinds of gadgets like ultrasonic dish hearing aids for sale for this.  I usually drive around with the car radio on 1700 kc and when I think I am close I park and walk around with a portable swbc receiver and an AM vhf air band rx.  That can get me down to the right pole.  Sometimes I get lucky and I can hear the arcing. 

[Sam KS2AM]

I took on an increase in my line noise.  I've always had some line noise (faint) but not so much that it got in the way of my copying weak stations.

Al

Just curious Al.  How do you know its line noise?  i.e. what steps did you take to identify the source as the power grid or a specific device/pole ?

[w1vtp]

I took on an increase in my line noise.  I've always had some line noise (faint) but not so much that it got in the way of my copying weak stations.

Al

Just curious Al.  How do you know its line noise?  i.e. what steps did you take to identify the source as the power grid or a specific device/pole ?

It's highly transient in nature. It covers the entire band - unlike wall warts etc that tend to have a higher level at portions of a given band.  I intend to do a screen shot and make a recording when I sent the complaint in the FCC (if it goes that far)

[w1vtp]

That's too bad Al.   I have what I think is a TV set around my place dumping buzzies on the high bands and making it tough to copy weak signals.

My experience with line and street light noise is that I get a lot faster cooperation if I can give them a pole to focus on.

If you can DF the source (finding the trouble spot is a whole separate field of expertise) that may get them out faster.

There are all kinds of gadgets like ultrasonic dish hearing aids for sale for this.  I usually drive around with the car radio on 1700 kc and when I think I am close I park and walk around with a portable swbc receiver and an AM vhf air band rx.  That can get me down to the right pole.  Sometimes I get lucky and I can hear the arcing. 

Good suggestion, all.  I'm going to see what PSNH does first. They already have this equipment - my complaint just needs to make to these people.

[w1vtp]

Just one more note.  PSNH is not unaware of their requirement. Just got this FCC advisory off the internet.  I'm confident of a satisfactory resolution

[W1RKW]

Al,
Reading your PDF, it might be a good idea to try to troubleshoot on your end now and try to eliminate your station and home environment. If you don't attempt that PSNH could turn around and point the finger to you only lengthening the whole discovery and mitigation process.  

b

[W2CKL]

I've had problems in the past with cheap dollar store dimmer lights, and just recently a wall wart that the cable company installed with their internet service. In both cases it caused a low level hash across the band, with heavy noise peaks at regular intervals. Like they say, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", so keep on them. If the pole is arching, they should thank you for locating the problem and saving them money.
If you can locate the offending pole, tell the power company 'it's smoking", that should get a response. HI.  
As for the above post, the simplest way to check if it's emanating from your house is to throw the main of the breaker box, with SW radio in hand. If the problem persists, its external. If not turn the breakers back on one by one and isolate the problem location.
Good luck,
Bob

[w1zb]

I have been through this issue twice with National Grid in MA. I found that you need to state in the customer service report that this is a Power Line Interference issue that needs to be address by the engineering department. National Grid has a special group with the appropriate detection equipment dedicated to handle these type of issues.  Hope this helps in your case.

73 Jerry  W1ZB

[W3GMS]

Al,
I encourage you to try to work in a professional manner with your utilities.  Yes, you can go to the FCC, but it will take a long time for them to get involved and do anything.  The FCC is not the magic bullet to a quick resolution. 

The best thing you can do is get to know the power quality guys from your utility.  Once they know that your knowledgeable about the subject you will get respect from them. 

When dealing with our utility company, it sometimes takes several months to get them to come out and look for noise.  After they do that, they fill out a trouble report and in most cases someone else fixes the problem and that takes more time.  Why does it take so long, is due to the fact that they are stretched so thin with very large territories to cover with fewer people than ever to cover the critical issues.  An outage or voltage integrity gets higher priority down here. 

I have been working with our local power quality group for at least 5 years now.  When they travel to my part of the country they call me just to make sure everything is ok and I am not having noise issues!  It took a lot of work to get to that point.

I have more problems now with birdies from consumer gear along with the little country store that installed computers. 

If you can isolate it to a pole that is a big help and usually will bring a more rapid resolution.  I use a portable AM aircraft receiver up on 134 MHz to zero in on the actual pole.  Going up in frequency allows you to DF the noise real well.  350 MHz is even better. 

A friend of mine thought sure he was having power line interference and it turned out to be the switching wall wart powering his cable box.  He had solid noise over a very large portion of the spectrum.  He operates a lot of 40 CW and his noise was from 40 all the way through 10 meters and maybe beyond.  Pull the breaker and run a receiver off of batteries is a good thing to do.     

Joe, W3GMS   

[w1vtp]

Understood, Joe

I had this problem when I first moved in back in '84 and had the same "first door" treatment.  I had to push a little then and succeeded in getting to the dept that handled these sort of things. Don't recall them calling it an engineering dept. I think it's the same "filter" being applied.  They just need to know that this sort of problem is not going to go away by ignoring it.

I am planning on hooking up the Flex to a 12V batt this weekend and shutting off the main breaker (as per Bopb's suggestion).  If the noise goes away, then it's my problem.  I have the advantage of the Flex with its very wide scan.  It covers the entire 160, 80 & 40 meter bands with no bumps - in my view indicative of harmonics induced by repetitive impulse energy. One other thing I will do tonight is put the Tek 2445 on the AF output and see if line sync stops the impulse pattern from drifting across the time domain presentation.  If it cannot be synced that way, then I need to look for some other source of impulse energy. The power line runs parrellel with my antenna so it wouldn't take much of an arc to cause this sort of problem.  If that is the case, they solved the problem before and they can solve it again.  We'll see.

a

[W1RKW]

Al,
One thing to try, and this is a K1JJ suggestion which worked quite well, when I was having a noise issue, tune your car radio as high as it will go on the AM band and drive around. I was able to locate a noise emanating from a neighbors house. I followed it up to pinpoint with a portable radio late at night.

[K9PNP]

I had similar issues with noise from 160 thru 20 M.  S-9 to 40-over at times.  Interestingly enough it quit when it rained.  Telltail sign here.  After a month of calling Duke Energy's 'help desk' [where ever it is in the country, even though they do not use foreign contractors] and finding that 'somebody' had closed the original ticket [they "don't know who"], I finally got a call from one of the local guys.  He came by the house and we went over the situation.  After much searching for the source of the noise that covered about a 16 square block area, he finally found a transformer bank with multiple loose connections and really dirty insulators with with carbon tracing.  Fixing that mess fixed the problem.  However, now it is back and the transformer bank is quiet on the aircraft band.  So, they are looking again.  As dry as it has been they probably will find numerous sources.

Bottom line:  Getting the problem out of the 800-number call center will usually get results.  The local guys are normally willing to try and fix the issues.

[w1vtp]

Mitch

You pretty much nailed it.  That was what I was referring to as the "front door."  I have some troubleshooting to do this weekend.  We'll see what PSNH does.


a

[Jeff W9GY]

I use a hand held 3 element yagi and an aircraft receiver (uses AM which hears noise well) to locate the offending pole.  Get a "fix" on the pole from several directions to be sure you have identified the correct one.  Noise from a source can conduct down lines and radiate from a discontinuity at a different pole.  So it's important to get multiple "fixes". 

Having specific information will get the power company folks out much faster.  Ask them to call you when they arrive at the scene so you can be present with the DF gear and hear the results as they work on things.  Believe me, this system works.  I've located tens (10's) of noise sources and have had them fixed.  Even been asked by the power company to identify several problems from other customers. 

[W1AEX]

Al,

I've also used the technique that Jeff mentions with a little 4 element 440 MHz beam and my VX7R tuned to 446.000 MHz in the AM mode. Works very nicely. There is a very convincing series of videos by N0RQ that show how precisely this technique works. The first video is less than a minute long and can be viewed here:

http://youtu.be/6EaJDw2ibDY

I've also had very good luck using my mobile rig tuned to 2 meter AM. To make reporting noise sources even easier, I put my digital camera on a tripod in the passenger seat and make a nice little video for YouTube. After uploading it, I mail the link for the video to the engineer who is handling the case. One video I made as I was tracking damaged hardware from the freak October storm last year can be seen here:

http://youtu.be/ObbiX3QDvZU

It's nothing fancy but it got their attention and they ended up replacing all the hardware on top of that pole and fixing a bad splice between poles 1124 and 1125 where a limb had fallen across the primary during the storm. The crew that made the initial repairs following the storm was only interested in restoring power and didn't spend time looking at the damaged hardware. Pole 1124 is about 1000 feet from my property. I also made a nice little video showing how this particular pole was affecting reception at my station. That was also helpful because they could see why this was an issue for me much more clearly.

http://youtu.be/vKHpMoSwT2Q

When they can clearly see the issue and don't have to do a lot of detective work they are apt to move much more quickly. In this case, once I found the problem, it took about 2 weeks for them to roll two bucket trucks to handle the repairs at pole 1124. Much to my surprise, I got a follow up call from the engineering department last Thursday (May 17th) asking if I have found any other issues that need attention. I do have a short list of 2 poles about 1000 feet away that intermittently sputter on cold windy days that I plan to share with them when I call them back next week.

Rob W1AEX

[WU2D]

That's nothing! Just wait and see how long it takes to book time on the Raytheon Range and get a test report once a certain engineer retires!

[W4NEQ]

Over the last couple of years I've had a bunch of experience cleaning up the "neighborhood" of several steady state and lots of intermittent line noise.

Best results are obtained when YOU locate the pole(s) causing the problem with a handheld yagi.   Once it is to that point, an ultrasonic parabolic mic will then locate it to within about a foot.  This has been true in about 90% of the cases.

the page is getting a bit dated (I've done some more since then) but this describes some of my adventures:

http://w4neq.com/htm/linenoise.htm

Chris
 

[W1AEX]

Chris, that's a nice graphic journal of powerline noise hunting. Well done!

Rob W1AEX

[Roy K8VWX]

        I  Use a Vecta navigation DF to get close ( auto radio @ 1700 OK also) and then use the MFJ DF @ 135Mhz attached to a HB 4 element Yagi and that gets you there. Yes it does help to nail the pole down with the pole number and the exact location. One time the power company had three bucket trucks here at one time replacing crappy hardware and leaky insulators plus 1 defective lightning arrestor.The fix for the arrestor was to just do away with it. Try to keep your cool and work with them.

[WA1GFZ]

Don't worry Mike, Al will be back as a part time contractor making 4 times the money in 6 months.

[WU2D]

Of course Frank! I forgot - this is Defense Contracting...

[Roy K8VWX]

        The OE power company will be here Thursday. Told them about a problem pole last Friday.Not too bad of time frame especially since I told them no hurry since it was not too severe a noise.I'm lucky to have such a fellow that will work with me on RFI. He thanked  me for giving him the pole number and exact location. I also played a recording of the noise. 

[gerry_w1id]

I live in the same town as Al but close to one of the busiest intersections and so I can relate to his problem. For me trying to completely eliminate noise has been akin to playing a game of Whack-a-Mole. However, I've seen some excellent suggestions posted here which I have also applied in the past and were very effective. Pulling the breakers in your own power distribution system and powering the rig by a battery should be the first step. One thing I have done is to keep a log noting the type of noise, strength, time, and duration. After looking over my notes one day it clearly pointed out the noise disappeared when it rained. That was traced to a line insulator near the busy intersection. I located the power pole myself by using my AM car radio tuned to the highest frequency it could and a portable scanner tuned to the aircraft band. Then I notified the power company and gave them the pole number. They "promptly" showed up on the scene after 3 or 4 weeks. Power lines radiate noise and if you limit yourself to low frequencies, you will not be able to precisely locate the noise source as you get close. As you get closer you have to switch to higher frequencies, hence the VHF hand-held scanner on the aircraft band. At night I could clearly see a blue haze over the offending insulator. Interesting. Other noise sources over the years included an aquarium tank heater, door bell transformer, and even a handy man installed solar array. Street light starters periodically fail about every 3 to 4 months. The power company even once admitted to me they were junk. Good luck trying to relate to the individual assigned by the power company to locate noise. About 20 years ago, the individual was a ham who was intimately familiar with noise problems and knew how to find them. Unfortunately he retired and now all we have is a kid with a portable noise receiver and not much of a clue.