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No AM reception anymore

MarcB

MarcB

During the day I used to get near crystal clear reception of the following stations:

910 WLAT 5KW
990 WXCT 2.5KW
1080 WTIC 50KW
1120 WPRX 1KW (Antenna is very close to where I live)
1320 WATR 5KW

1240 WWCO 1KW was noisy, but listenable.

And at night I'd get noisy but listenable reception of all the stations except for 990 (as they're only 80 watts at night).

Now my landlord has been having remodeling work done in his dentist office downstairs and ever since December my AM reception has gone to just about zero. WTIC is barely audible through static as is WPRX. The rest of the band is filled with static. I know it's not being caused by any electrical irregularities in my apartment, because I've unplugged things with no improvement in reception and there's nothing but static on my battery powered walkman. I have normal AM reception on my car radio downstairs in the parking lot, so I know it's not an electrical problem in the neighborhood.
 
Welcome to radio reception in the 2010s! You are not alone. I have interference problems that come from neighbors also. It is probably some device or devices in the dental office or another neighbor, but you might first try turning off your circuit breakers just to double check. The electrical interference in my own home is so difficult to decipher anymore, and it is so painstaking to unplug and plug in so many things, only to find that the source is sometimes from a neighbor's house. One can only conclude that the interference assault on the AM band is deliberate. If it's under construction, I would assume that maybe they have touch on lamps or dimmer switches, and not computers, TVs, and DVD players. Remember that episode of Seinfeld when Kramer shorted out a whole apartment's electrical system from outside the apartment? Is there an outlet outside the office? :) :) Warning: Don't try this at home, Kramer is a professional! You could get a dangerous electrical shock like Kramer.
 
I get the same thing around here at night. About 9 pm I get such a loud staticy interference on my radio that only the strongest stations come through. The funny thing about my interference is that from about 1000 up to 1600 isn't bothered by it, but from 1000 down to 540 is nothing but noise, which again, only the strongest station can overcome. (WHYN, WNNZ, AM 740 in Toronto) etc.
 
This is why I have to go to the local park to do AM DXing. Someone on my street must have an atom-splitting 1000" plasma TV or several ones because the noise becomes very apparent as soon as you turn onto my street. I could DX the Chicago clear frequencies that were opened up early this morning without the interference since they didn't have it on then but it's easy to tell when they do. Otherwise, it's nothing but a buzz except for a select few frequencies here.
 
Is the noise only there during the day, when they are working on the remodeling, or is it there all the time?
If it's all the time, you might ask the landlord to have the wiring checked for loose connections, or just ask him if he's "OK with burning the place down?".
They probably have some kludge'd up connection, like a couple of wires wedged in to an outlet, or something.
 
Many places with fluorescent lighting are upgrading from the older magnetic ballasts to the more efficient electronic ballasts. The new electronic ballasts can ruin radio reception. Besides for that a lot of new electronic equipment doesn't seem to care about radio interference anymore.
 
It's definitely something with the building. The other day instead of parking my car in the back of the parking lot (where I don't have any interference) I parked in a space backed right up to the building and I could hear the same interference I receive inside my apartment albeit not nearly as bad the stations at least are still listenable and as soon as I pull away from the building the interference is gone.
 
I also find this has a tremendous amount to do with the quality of your receiver.

Older radios generally tend to trump newer ones in my experience.
 
The dentist may have some new medical or dental electronic devices that are on all the time.

For years I had an Australian made medical device that caused radio interference whenever it was turned on, but that wasn't a problem because I didn't want the radio on when it was being used.

Last year, a $3 switch went on the $3,500 unit and despite spending hours searching the internet, it took me a month to find a replacement switch in an old fashioned highway strip mall electronics store about 40-miles outside New York City.

In the meantime, I also got a brand new replacement unit from the same top quality Australian manufacturer. The new unit was smaller and cheaper, works just as well except they apparently decided the mechanical switches were a weak link in the reliability chain, or they wanted to save the three bucks, so the new unit has no power switch, and it is on and causing RF interference all the time. It's not a problem when listening to local stations, but DXing requires a disconnecting of the plug and shutdown of the phantom power. If your dentist landlord isn't a DXer, he might have similar equipment that is on all the time, and not be aware. The best argument to make to him is that by shutting down everything in the office at night he will save money on his electric bill. Just hope there is an easy power switch where he can do that.
 
A strongly worded reply I had left as the original reply to Marc was removed quickly, so I shall be a bit more moderate.

The new switching-type electronic flourescent ballasts are disastrous, and would seem to be FCC pt 15 non-compliant.

These have been installed in the maintanance shop area where I work destroying AM reception of
everything but the 3 50kws that are about 12 miles away.

The only recourse is to move, Marc.

-------

Now, just insert very strongly opinions into the above, which would suggest legal reourse.

There is always the noisy device or two in medical fields. Usually such sounds are intermittent and vary.
Inside lights are on most of the time.

These the new ballasts are so effective at creating wideband splatter, it would be easy to believe they were designed primarily as radio jammers, with the added benefit of being able to be inserted in lighting circuits everywhere.

Marc, does the level change at all, ever?
Maybe you could ask the landlord to shut off circuits at the end of some day and help identifiy the source.

Unless the dentist is a radio nut, it's unlikely he or she would want to experiment with noise suppression at the source.

I'm sorry this has happened to you.
You can try to argue for rent reduction based on loss of usefulness of the property.
Not just anyone could, but as a bona fide radio geek, you CAN.
If the choice were not made by the lanlord, your value in renting would not have been diminished.
It's not like an accidental occurance or the result of an outside influence.
Presumably the landlord did not include in the rental agreement any forfeiture of the normal use of radios in the rental,
or exclusions permitting his business to radiate such RF as to make radios unusable on the property.
 
Tom, I have to wonder if you removed the earlier post, or it was removed for you. I didn't particularly notice anything "bad".

I am getting to the same situation here....more and more noise (even up to VHF frequencies), and no way to do much with antennas. I was Googl'ing some radio stuff last week, and stumbled back on to a YouTube of a "sensationalist" TV newscast about a Ham that wanted to put up several towers on his rural property. I realized that a vindictive neighbor could easily destroy his station's usefulness by just installing a couple of plasma TVs or a bug zapper, and there's not much he could do, except "move".
(I have to call the story "sensationalist", because the report was obviously biased....even using photos of the ugliest cell towers they could find, as illustrations.)

I'd like to know if any studies have been done on how to limit the RFI from some of these devices. Would it help if Cable companies routinely installed ferrites on the line going to the plasma sets, helping to block the "antenna effect" radiation of their noise. Also, would it be prudent to add a couple of grounds to the multiple lines going in to MDU's? After all, it's the Cable company's lines that are acting as transmit antennas for the noise.

Is there a way to create a rating system for "bad" bulbs, and campaign for them to be removed from stores? There was a video recently, from one of the Scandinavian amateur radio associations, that demonstrated "good" and "bad" bulbs.

One of my local RFI sources seems to be a large tanning salon, which has about a dozen large tanning beds. Even when closed, the beds radiate noise from their power supplies running "artsy-fartsy" neon lights that show through their front windows 24/7.
I looked up the spec's on some of those machines, and they draw as much current as most radio station transmitters. I have to wonder if some power line filters at their end would help.

Then, of course, there's the power-line noise problems along most streets. Plus, the cities are now going to new streetlights that buzz almost continually. I've even heard some that buzz when the string of lights is off, maybe because of some leakage current (they seem to buzz, individually, when they glitch off, under normal circumstances).

Can we "radio nuts" get a tax write-off for constantly having to move? ;)
 
Can we "radio nuts" get a tax write-off for constantly having to move?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the DX interfering electronic pollution is just like the "light pollution" that screws up the skies for amateur astronomers. One rural house I owned was a half mile from the highway, and the lights from all those stores and gas stations made the sky so bright on cloudy nights it never got fully dark in the house. And there was still electric buzz all the time, I think, from MRI facilities out on the highway. I was never able to pin it down.

So, to be able to really see the stars or really do Shortwave or AM DXing I had to drive ten miles out in farm country and park along a river. In my current location, I often have trouble listening to local AM stations on my car radio, thanks to ambient electric noise in the air, and some of the local AMs are 50-kw and as close as ten miles away. The power lines along the main roads are just very high voltage and high current and lots of noise.

Such is the price of modern life. I do have fiber optic cables to my house, they aren't subject to electric noise and so I do my DXing online now, but the thrill is gone.
 
Yeah, DX'ing on-line or via a satellite feed is kinda like a gourmet cook ordering a cardboard-and-tomato pizza.
It just is not fun any more.
 
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