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ka1bwo
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« on: May 17, 2017, 01:44:08 PM »

I think we all been there.


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W3RSW
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Rick & "Roosevelt"


« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2017, 03:43:41 PM »

Pretty funny.
Well one thing I noticed is that RFI was a lot less back then. Note the manual hedge shears. Much was manual, hoes, scythes and sickles for weeds, Matics, shovels, and bars, tower cranks, plain old light bulbs on another front and all that stuff. I had sort of forgotten channel  2 and up interference from us, not to mention TV IF's so I guess it sort of balances out.  Grin
Worked hard and played hard, ah yes.

Look at all the old group and school pictures, most everyone skinny except for a portly older gent and momma or two.  TCM has all the old movies for verification, heh, heh.
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RICK  *W3RSW*
WD8BIL
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« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2017, 04:46:05 PM »

Ain't it the truth?Huh

When I was a wee JN.... the family was eating supper, (remember when the whole family gathered around the table?) and the phone rang. I answered it, since I was closest. It was one of the neighbor's just a wailing about her TV soaps being ruined by that stupid ham radio I was on. I told her we were eating supper but she interrupted me screaming "There it goes again!!"

It took me 5 minutes to convince her it couldn't be me since I was talking to her on the phone at the time.

Turns out one of the Quinn boys had gotten a CB, Regency Range Gain if I remember, and was tearing up the neighborhood!
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W6TOM
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« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2017, 06:30:11 PM »

  I did interference complaints for the local power company in my work area, they called them RTVI, Radio TV Interference. The largest single group were HAMS followed by AM radio and only 2 TV complaints, almost everyone here had cable. Of the two TV complaints one was the Power Company and the other poor grounding on the Phoney Company's (my term of endearment for AT&T) messenger cables.

 A large part of the complaints from HAMS were something else, florescent lights, switching power supplies, lots of Wall Warts are switchers, lots of things now that generate RFI.

 I also handled issues with interference to our own radio systems, in one case locating a pager system 30 miles away that had a spur right in our pass band.
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AJ1G
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« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2017, 10:00:25 PM »

When i first went on  air from here on the southeast CT shoreline in the early 80s, most people in the neighborhood were still receiving their TV programming over the air with outdoor antennas.  I had a fairly large all channel LP on a rotor up about 40 feet and we got good reception from the Providence, Hartford and New Haven stations, and to a lesser extent some of the Boston stations.   During summer months when there was a lot of tropo ducting going on, the NBC station from Providence would get severe interference from the NBC  station on Channel 10 down in the Norfolk, VA area.  Lots of multipath fading and ghosting of the same network programming from both stations, when they went to commercials, you often would see spots for car dealers in VA!  Swinging the LP to the south of course really brought up the signal strength from down there, and it sometimes produced a better picture than from up in Providence.

We used to get calls all the time from the neighbors when this happened blaming me for the interference.  Many of the calls came in when I wasn't even home, of course. 
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Chris, AJ1G
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W6TOM
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« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2017, 11:48:39 PM »

  When I was first licensed, 1983, and I was on HF with CW, my next door neighbor complained I was getting into his black and white TV when I was on 15 meters. My TV was a then new Sanyo color TV, one end of the fan dipole I had built was tied off to the Chimney TV mast my TV antenna was on. My Sanyo was not bothered one bit when I was on 15 meters but try to explain to the neighbor his TV had a 21 MHz IF. All he knew was that when I was on the air the TV didn't work right so it was my fault, not his poorly designed TV.

   I tried attacking stubs to his 300 ohm twin lead cut for 15 meters, it did help but did not totally eliminate the issue.

    As luck would have it his TV died a few weeks later, he went out and bought a new color TV, end of problem.
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W1AEX
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« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2017, 11:32:56 AM »

That cartoon brings back memories of a few unsolicited audio reports from my radio past. Fortunately, I also had a Sanyo color TV from the same era Tom and much to my delight it was immune to all of my transmissions from 160 meters through 6 meters.

Unfortunately, I had a neighbor 500 feet behind my property who could not watch any VHF or UHF channel while I was operating on any band from 40 meters and up. When he knocked on the door for the first time, I showed him my station, and then rotated my 20m-6m quad antenna and my chimney mounted TV antenna, which were about 40 feet apart, so they were aimed right at each other. He stood there in amazement as I made a transmission on 15 meters while the TV presented a perfect signal without flinching. I handed him the phone and asked him to call his wife to check the reception at his house. She reported that the TV was going nuts.

The Sanyo did a great job of convincing him that the problem was his. At any rate, as it turned out, the guy who put up his TV antenna had "helpfully" installed a plastic-encased, unfiltered, Broadband VHF-UHF Gavin TV preamp (sold by Radio Shack) up on the chimney mast. All of his problems went away when he removed it and I never heard from him again.

With everyone out here now running cable or satellite and using cell phones instead of landlines, over the past 30 years I've only gotten a "signal report" from one neighbor located about 500 feet to my west. He mentioned that my voice could be heard faintly on his computer's speaker system now and then. When I told him how he could easily fix that he just laughed and said it annoyed his teenage kids so he was good with it.

Unfortunately, it now seems that we are the ones who have to deal with whatever "noise generators" our neighbors drag home from Walmart and plug into the grid. So far, the diversity reception trick has removed whatever has appeared in my bandpass but it might be only a matter of time before something really ugly shows up!


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One thing I'm certain of is that there is too much certainty in the world.
WU2D
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CW is just a narrower version of AM


« Reply #7 on: July 04, 2017, 09:47:13 AM »

It's Comcast's fault. It always is. Hee.


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These are the good old days of AM
W6TOM
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« Reply #8 on: July 04, 2017, 10:29:57 AM »

  I did a RTVI, Radio TV Interference complaint for the power company, the women who put in the complaint listened to a low power AM station. She had just bought a home and when pulling into the driveway that station was badly interfered with.

  I went out to her house, she was not home, I had the same issue but ONLY in front of her home, go a few houses either way, no problem. What I found was it was coming from the house across the street, that house had been recently remodeled and the electrical service changed which required a permit. The cable TV service was also changed, the workmanship was less than stellar

  Note the "good" ground on the cable TV, it was connected to a screw on the outside breaker box for the electric service, also note the professional way the cable drop was run from the street, A true work of Art and Beauty.

  I'm sure if you were operating from her home it would have been heard on 80 meters at least!!


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KD6VXI
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Making AM GREAT Again!


« Reply #9 on: July 05, 2017, 12:47:09 PM »

My next door neighbors had a cable drop problem.

I was on the roof of the garage, and looked at their drop.

The cable system ground was a piece of copper wire wrapped a couple times around the weather head periscope, and then twisted tightly.

There is NO ground in the service panel. Meaning, neutral is floating back to the pole!

I told them to stop calling Brighthouse and start calling an electrical contractor.

It culminated in the resident passing away.  He drank himself to death.  Before that happened, he yelled to me one day....  'don't care whatchoor dune over yonder.  Had the cable guy out.  Now, when my cell phone rings, the TV box shuts off (they put a Brighthouse app on his phone  and it was screwing with the STB!).

Never looked back,

--Shane
KD6VXI
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