Finding Power-Line
Noise Sources on the HF and VHF Bands - W1AEX
The ideas here are shared for the purpose of offering a few
thoughts about locating, documenting, and reporting power-line
noise sources. It's not a terribly technical page but sometimes
simplicity can be very effective. The goal here is to use a few
tools available to most hams that can be used to facilitate
communication with the local utility company about damaged
power-line hardware that is affecting reception. Your mileage may
vary, but the ideas below have proven to be very effective for me
in getting my local power company to respond quickly to power-line
noise issues. If you come up with other ideas that have worked for
you, I'd love to learn about them!
After an exasperating power-line noise issue that took almost 6
weeks to resolve back in 2009 (a blown lightning arrestor on a
distribution line out in the deep woods almost a mile away) I
decided to equip myself to find HF noise sources instead of
waiting for the power company to mobilize its limited resources
designated for this purpose. I have a Yaesu FT-8900 in the car
that can receive AM on 10m/6m/2m/440 MHz and it has been my
primary tool for tracking noise sources down to a single pole. I
keep frequencies programmed to receive the AM mode on each of the
4 bands so it only takes a few seconds to switch the rig over to
noise detection mode. The issues that I have dealt with were
easily tracked down by listening to a 2 meter frequency in the AM
mode or even by using the AM aircraft band. If you don't have
mobile equipment that has AM mode capability an inexpensive radio
scanner that can receive the AM aircraft band can be used
successfully. The general rule for seeking out noise sources is to
determine the general direction the noise is coming from by using
a directional antenna at your home station location. Then head off
in that direction with the mobile station while listening on 10
meter or 6 meter AM. As you get closer to the noise source, move
up to 2 meter AM or the AM aircraft band to help with localizing
the noise. I have not really had to listen on the 440 MHz band as
the noise I have experienced here has peaked up quite sharply on 2
meters as the offending pole is approached.
Documentation of the noise source is critical to successfully
getting the power company to respond promptly. I've found YouTube
to be an excellent format to utilize for uploading "noise videos"
to share with the power company. Documentation is especially
important when the noise problem you are experiencing is
intermittent. It only takes a few minutes to set up a camera
tripod in the passenger seat of my car for the purpose of creating
a video like the one below that I used following a devastating
storm on October 29, 2011 that caused tremendous damage to the
grid in my area. There's nothing complicated here as
the captured audio is simply the radio's speaker acoustically
coupled to the camera's microphone. This arrangement does a great
job of showing the rise in amplitude as the noise source is
approached. The links to the noise videos below are examples of a
couple of "helpful hints" that I sent by email to the engineer
assigned to my case at the local technical group of Connecticut
Light and Power. Note how the noise peaks up sharply as
pole 1124 is approached. The editing tools available at YouTube
allow registered users to embed text in any video that you upload
to your account, so you can see that I annotated "Pole 1124" to
assist the folks at the power company:
Pole 1124
To help the power company understand how this particular noise was
affecting reception on to my station equipment a link to the video
below was also provided. Note that this noise problem was cleaning
out reception from 20 meters through 2 meters but did not seem to
cause any issues to the AM broadcast band or 160 - 40 meters. This
is important to share with the power company because frequently
they will send someone out in a truck who will attempt to listen
for the noise on the truck's AM broadcast band radio:
Reception on 10
meters
I've always believed that you need to make sure you have
all your information ready when you make that first contact with
the power company. If you call them and try to explain the details
of your problem over the phone you may find a hint of skepticism
creeping into the conversation as the person on the other end of
the phone writes the word "crackpot" next your name. Make sure you
have all the details you can provide written down in front of you
before making your first report. Also, be sure to document every
call you make to the power company. Annotate the date and time of
the contact, the name of the person you spoke with as well as
their contact information, and details of the content of the
conversation. At some point, if things seem to be moving slowly, I
have found it helpful to review all my efforts to communicate with
the power company at the beginning of each conversation. When it
reaches the point where it takes more than 30 seconds to read off
all the dates of your phone calls they usually get the message and
things begin to move. The contact protocol with my company usually
results in a call back from the local technical group a week or
two after reporting the problem to the main company. My initial
conversation on the phone with the local line engineer
regarding the issue shown in the videos above went
something like this:
Engineer..........My
name is ***** and I'm a line engineer with Connecticut Light and
Power. I understand you are having a noise issue of some kind?
Me..........Hi, thanks for calling. I'm experiencing a power
line noise issue that affects radio reception at my home
location. Engineer..........Oh
really, can you describe the problem?
Me..........Sure, listen to this. (My home station video with
10 meter noise is queued up on my computer and I hold the phone up
to the computer speaker with the volume impressively loud and
press "play" to give him a nice dose of noise.)
Engineer..........Um... yes
that sounds like a problem.
Me.......Yes indeed, it's causing severe issues with my F.C.C.
Part 97 licensed operations.
Engineer..........Are you
sure this noise problem isn't coming from something in your
house?
Me..........Yes, this is not coming from my home. In fact, it's
coming from pole 1124 which is about 1000 feet from my house.
Engineer..........Um... how are you determining this?
Me..........I have equipment that I can use to track down noise
sources such as this. In fact, I have several videos prepared
for you that you can view right now if you allow me to send you
the links by email. Otherwise, I'd be happy to read you the link
addresses over the phone right now. (They really don't want to
write down the links so you can be pretty sure they will give
you an email address.)
Engineer..........That would be helpful. I'll take a look and
get back to you.
At that point the engineer gave me his email address and sure
enough, after viewing the videos, he called right back to discuss
the steps that would be taken. If you can make convincing video
documentation that allows them to address the problem without
involving resources outside of their technical group the problem
can get resolved very quickly.
The video uploads to YouTube made it possible for the local
technical group to send along the
informational video links to whoever needed convincing that a
response was necessary and that helped to get things moving
quickly here. Within two weeks the power company rolled two bucket
trucks and replaced everything on pole 1124 which is located about
1000 feet from my property and that was the end of that issue.
Well... almost. As it turns out, the splice to the left of the
pole seemed to have a problem after they installed the new
hardware on the pole. Apparently it had been stressed during the
storm damage and was further stressed when the repairs were done
to the pole. As a result, lights in the area fed by this
distribution line flickered slightly. Within a few hours a truck
came back and put a jumper across the splice and that was the end
of the story.
I found a number of other ham radio operators have been using
YouTube to document line noise issues. Some of them have been very
helpful and are good examples of how resourceful hams can be when
faced with an issue that messes with their enjoyment! After
viewing a series of videos by Dave - N0RQ it seemed like a good
idea to build a handheld 4 element 440 MHz beam that can be used
with my VX7R (which also receives AM on 10m/6m/2m/440 MHz) when an
issue seems to be coming from areas not accessible with my
vehicle. Dave has an excellent web site dedicated to
power line noise and also a series of YouTube videos that start
here:
If you've got line noise, document the problem and then contact
your utility company. Be persistent, in fact, be relentless so
that they know you are not going away. Call every other day for
updates and always be courteous, persistent, and patient and
you'll almost certainly get it resolved. The ARRL has provided a step-by-step problem
solving FAQ written by Mike Gruber - W1MG to assist hams
with identifying and resolving power-line noise issues. It's
helpful to read this thoroughly to understand how to file a
complaint should your utility company be unresponsive. The
importance of documentation is stressed in the League's narrative
and an outline of what a reasonable timeline for resolution is
also provided.
