If I may suggest a follow on video. It might include the audio from the final test with the ultrasonic gear (wind included). Finally, maybe how the local power company responded, if they mitigated the noise and their suggestions for how to interact with them. Pleasanton, CA is serviced I believe by PG&E who has been a good company to work with on these things, so I would suspect this case ended well. At any rate, even a new video with a new source and and a new complete follow through would be extremely helpful to all hams who (and there are many of us) suffer from power line noise and interference. What say you ARRL?
During the 1980s one culprit of the powerline noise was a fluorescent light with choke ballast which is irritating when you listen to distant AM radio station. Turning the florescent off solves the problem. But now that practically all devices have a switching power supply and some cheaper models don't have a proper filter dirties the powerline.
Inside the city (Istanbul) my rig only gets noises. Especially rainy days. I throw 2 antennas, changed all cables 3 times. No chance. Out of the city or roof of a skyscraper. Only two options left to get HF signals.
Nice Job Mike. I sell Ultrasound tools to power companies to help them find RFI and EMI problems. It sounded like Corona and or Tracking in the video. Do you remember what the humidity was on that day? hi/low. 73's KE6UPI
Great video! I work for a utility and am also a ham, and this makes me wonder if this method of fault detection would help to identify the more elusive problems that aren't visibly obvious or otherwise easily detected. The source of this RFI is possibly from a faulty insulator.
I know a power worker that uses an old AM radio in this truck. All day long listening to his talk show and BOOM power lines in sight and RFI on the AM radio.
I'm surprised California hasn't outlawed the use of devices to track down power line noise! The PVC handle, coax and red end caps contain materials suspected of causing cancer and other illnesses.
Or the fact that he is holding the ultrasonic microphone similar to a gun! So scary what if it actually turns into one of those machine guns that are legal. Nanny state California! Why I left... great video by the way! Thanks for the demonstration.
The video makes mention of 'a signature' and making sure that the signature stays the same as we go to higher bands to localize the interference. What is the signature? How is it measured? How does one tell if two signatures are the same or different?
It's the number of sparking spikes on each half of the 60 hz cycle caused by powerline sparking. Each RFI source will have a different sparking source signature on an oscilloscope display with spikes at different levels and at different times in an AC cycle. Shows the display on a Radar Engineers 242 RFI rcvr: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xrG92ypjFvU.html
I would love to hire you to do this for us. We have an interference from what seems like it's the power pole transformer, or structures surrounding it, the transmission lines and/or the pole with the bracket on it. We have two poles in the backyard. They are sounding off audibly depending on the load on it, and it comes in the house as well. The power company wants to say it's not them but other companies are directing me back to the power company . If I could do like you I could show them the offending noise is coming from the pole. Is there a way to hire you or someone in our area (San Jose)? I hope you see this message. Thank you for the video.
Either a smart meter using the grid for communication and signaling the mothership, or someone is using a powerline ethernet at home, which travels up to the nearest transformer, which i assume is on that pole, since i didn't saw it all that well and close up. Quite likely pulse square waves and some nasty harmonics, based from 1-100MHz and repeating themselves countable times upwards.
Hi madmax2069, it really does not matter what the power company said and the action they took as the video shows the general technique used to identify the faulty pole and then it's the utility company that's responsible for identifying and repairing whatever on the pole is generating the RFI which can be anything from a bad lightning arrestor, bad insulator, loose connection, etc. I spend a lot of time tracking down RFI for myself and others and when dealing with power line RFI I first start out direction finding the RFI on HF where the ham radio operator is experiencing the RFI until I get close enough to the source where I can start hearing the RFI up on 135 MHz, and then I locate the pole similar to what's shown in this video (sometimes I do go up to 438 MHz but 135 MHz along with enough attenuation is typically adequate). In this video Mike Gruber was using a very expensive receiver (approximately $6,700 USD) that allows you to obtain a "signature" but you can typically do well just using a portable receiver in AM mode with a wide filter selected that has adjustable RF gain control (or user selectable attenuators), along with good direction finding antennas. Just FYI, Don
@@wd8dsb actually it does matter what they said, and if they took action or not, because many will do absolutely nothing and tell you to beat sand, or they say they're on it and never do anything about it. So yes it sort of does matter. I just want to know if their power company gave them trouble or not.
@@madmax2069 Thanks for the reply. The biggest problem I run into is finding someone within the utility company that really is responsible for addressing RFI issues. Typically when you contact customer service at a utility company they will have no clue what you are talking about and they will send out a technician to take a look at the pole you identified and he/she will visually see nothing wrong and close the case. Even if you find the correct person at the utility company you need to make sure you identify and communicate factors that influence the RFI such as rain, snow, temperature, etc., otherwise the RFI will often not be present when they go and evaluate the situation and they will no longer have confidence in what you are telling them. There often is someone within the utility company (at least at the bigger utility companies) that does indeed know what RFI is who's responsible for addressing the issue but finding that person is usually very difficult and even then their resources as well as technical competence is sometimes minimal, and that's why identifying the actual pole with 99 plus percent confidence as shown in this video is critical versus just telling the utility company that you're experiencing power line RFI is so important (especially in this day and age when a lot of RFI could be mistaken for power line interference). As an example Duke Energy in central Indiana has a department called "power quality group" and there is a person (engineer) in that group that's responsible for addressing RFI complaints but at AES in central Indiana (formerly called IPL), the group is called their "radio group" that's responsible for addressing RFI complaints so it's often like searching for a needle in a haystack until you find someone that knows what you're talking about that's also responsible for addressing the problem (it can be very frustrating and time consuming for you). I've also dealt with some very small REMC's (Rual Electric Membership Companies) that have very little knowledge or tools to deal with RFI but with enough guidance they always resolve the problem. Probably the best thing is to have someone (a volunteer) in your region track down your RFI (the actual pole with 99 percent or greater confidence) or at least confirm your findings that has a lot of experience tracking down power line interference that has already established a good working relationship (and track record) with the utility company that the hardware belongs to, and then let that person either contact the utility company for you or have him guide you on how to get help from the utility company. I personally have never had a power line interference case go unresolved but it can often take months for the issue to be addressed, and these are cases in which I personally identified the bad pole. I would consider 1 month to be a very good response time from point of initial contact to when the repair has been made, but in very bad cases where I've seen obvious damage the response time has been much quicker (sometimes just a few days). Good Luck.
My power utility used this same equipment to locate an S15+ noise problem exactly like this that makes my equipment useless. They were able to tune one AM broadcast station on their work truck and said “If we can hear that, we won’t fix it”, then left. What else can I do if they fail to fix the problem?
Exactly like this I am hearing now also. The volume isnt HIGH but its really disturbing, especially in the nights.. What frequency is this at? Around 30-50Hz some place?
Don't always suspect the power company being the suspect. Had a ham radio operator complain about rfi coming from the local power utility and they were not the problem. Turned out it was the local telephone utility with a bad ground wire connection in the ground wire running down a pole to either a ground rod or grounding plate at the base of the pole.
I live in a very rural area how far should I go around my home to find PLM I located one pole about a half mile away and power company repaired it dropped noise level from s9+ to s7+ but very loud buzzing
Disappointing - great presentation up to the point where the ultrasonic device could not be used. Also as others have mentioned there was not follow up coverage with the utility. Another example of the ARRL quality.
