My oldest brother would some times use "pole whacking" to localize noise to an individual pole. After DF the noise to a suspect power pole he would whack the pole with a 10lb sledge hammer and listen for any signal change. It actually was a reasonably effective tool, especially back 30yrs ago before cheap thermal imaging and ultrasonic listening devices. The real danger would be if there was a serious mechanical defect and power cable dropped.
A fellow ham club member and I did exactly this about 10 years ago. We spent 3-4 days driving around town with a receiver and sledge hammer. The city actually fixed some of it.
This video just popped up for me and I glad it did. I look forward to digging into the website to see what I can learn. I've dealt with power line noise before that got taken care of by the utility company but now I have new noise I need to run down. Thank you for building and sharing this. Garage door power supply, you say? Hmmm.
I didn't quite catch the gist about Fibre internet feeds. I have both coax Docsis and fiber in my building. Two competing providers. Oh and power lines on 3 sides of the property. I have massively improved my 80m experience with better coax, 31&77 toroids at both ends of the feedline, some experimental grounding etc. I still need more signal as a start. The one net is likely entirely in my skip zone. Also the noise is worst at the time of the net, go figure. I'm still trying to track it down, but I think I've mostly mitigated it. Bigger antenna required lol.
I have had RFI on 80M and 40M for the past six months on my 80M OCFD. I put 5 slip on toroids that is supposed to knock out 80M and below, it did not. Just this past week I made a choke from a 240-type 31 toroid to spec from a website. I installed it , first test, no RFI. A day later I tried talking on 40M, RFI once again....... 2 chokes on the RG213 coax and no luck. Now im going to retire the OCFD and replace it with an 80M dipole. I am very interested to see what you do in this video for a choke and to see any testing results you might provide.
I'm a CBer, and you know what? I've found hams to be most stupid and naive on this topic. Most recently, reading through the comment section,there was one comment on using a balun or choke with a half wave dipole. He said, we in the ham community laugh about this, it doesn't matter... or to that effect. Implying that they avidly practice without a balun, and they were actually laughing at CBers in this instance. Like they have the inside knowledge. Another comment I received in reply to a comment by myself about CMC, he simply said that he doesn't care about CMC, never has. Remember it works both ways with interference, and CMC has an array of ill effects. More disturbing, this comment was from a prominent HAM RU-vidr, his channel being the most popular I know of, AND he's a manufacturer of antennas! In fact, I don't think he even knew about CMC! Trust me, I've known of other experienced hams who needed education on the matter. It's basically a joke.
sorry you say . they get there ticket and turn on the radio and have s9 static and you say they wont stick around the hobby . that's back wards . they hear what it's like from friends or family and they never get there ticket . who in the hell studies and then gets on ham radio. 75% have radios before there ticket. as you can buy a radio without a ticket that's law . try and convince the youth to drop there cellphone for a radio LOL . there is just so very little interest in ham now . I think what's saving the hobby is cheap china radios . thank them for keeping the hobby alive in 2022.
