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"No one cares about your stupid radio"

Sounds like my Operations contact at the power company recently retired. The "call center" says they can't even tell me who took his place. They also said they didn't know what "radio interference" is, or if they were supposed to take calls for such a thing.
Where is Marv Loftness when we need him?
 
Found that a big discount clothing store across the street had problems with their sign a few months ago. A couple of letters in their logo went out, and the RFI was like a huge arc welder would make.
I talked to their store manager, who could not give me her name due to "privacy rules". She had me look up the contact information for the owners, on line, and write a complaint since "managers are not allowed to report issues to corporate".
I came home about three weeks later and noticed a bucket truck in front of their store. The guy told me he was subcontracted by a local sign company to check it out, but he had "never heard of a sign interfering with radio or TV".
 
They came back a month or so ago and got the missing letters working on the sign. I don't think they replaced the bad bulbs over the front doors. RFI is now just as bad as ever, maybe worse.
Lights in our apartment complex continue to get worse. The HPSV bulbs keep cycling on and off, and many are overheating to the point that the plastic lenses melt.
 
Just sent another, detailed message to the corporate offices of the big clothing retailer. Tried to give them two phone numbers, but the website balked at it. Finally got it to accept one of the numbers, but I'm not sure the message went through. I hope so...I'm tired of typing.
 
Forgot to mention this a while back....
During the summer, the local "city" rewrote their codes, and removed the one about light spillage. Chik-fil-A quickly installed five-hundred (yes, 500) additional LED lights on their building.
 
Some time over the last month or so, the chicken place took down the 500 bulbs, and went back to what they had originally. Their order-takers are wearing hats with lighted brims.
Now, if they would serve turkey sandwiches, I'd go back there a lot!
 
kenglish said:
Some time over the last month or so, the chicken place took down the 500 bulbs, and went back to what they had originally. Their order-takers are wearing hats with lighted brims.
Now, if they would serve turkey sandwiches, I'd go back there a lot!
Click to expand...

Do you think Chik-fil-A removed the LED's because of an interference complaint?
 
I haven't found any serious Rfi from those particular lights. I monitored them a few times. Originally, the only RFI seemed to be from one HPSV bulb. Other sources were louder than anything else from Chick-fil-A could be making.
I think the city may have sent them back to their original plans, until they can get a new plan approved.

There are still numerous issues in the area. Bad power lines, apartment lighting, possible damage to a power pole from a 5G installation. I'm noticing increased noise from traffic signals everywhere since they were changed to LED retrofits a year or so ago. Some downtown SLC lights are noisier than the light-rail trains.
 
kenglish said:
I haven't found any serious Rfi from those particular lights. I monitored them a few times. Originally, the only RFI seemed to be from one HPSV bulb. Other sources were louder than anything else from Chick-fil-A could be making.
I think the city may have sent them back to their original plans, until they can get a new plan approved.

There are still numerous issues in the area. Bad power lines, apartment lighting, possible damage to a power pole from a 5G installation. I'm noticing increased noise from traffic signals everywhere since they were changed to LED retrofits a year or so ago. Some downtown SLC lights are noisier than the light-rail trains.
Click to expand...

Light rail trains are nasty. New trains in Boston got some attention a few years back - since they essentially wiped the whole AM band. Driving in that area recently I checked and there seemed to be very little noise - possibly they add some suppression.

Probably the one thing that would be fixed very quickly - or shut down, would be anything that generates noise on the 108-137 Mhz AM aircraft band.
 
Most of my RFI tracking is done on aircraft band frequencies. The other day, I did comparisons on a suspect pole, and had massive RF noise at 135 MHz, but no arcing detected acoustically with an ultrasonic detector and dish.
I have noticed that many LED street lights give off ultrasonic noise. Maybe that keeps the birds away?
 
kenglish said:
Most of my RFI tracking is done on aircraft band frequencies. The other day, I did comparisons on a suspect pole, and had massive RF noise at 135 MHz, but no arcing detected acoustically with an ultrasonic detector and dish.
I have noticed that many LED street lights give off ultrasonic noise. Maybe that keeps the birds away?
Click to expand...

It probably does. The ultrasonic noise might be ferrite beads or cores used for filtering that are vibrating. If so, it may be sign of good design.

Many cable companies near airports used to run the mid-band channels that fall on the aircraft frequencies 10 dB or so lower than the other channels - fearing leakage would bring an FCC visit - usually putting channel guides, or something similar, on those channels.
 
channel99 said:
It probably does. The ultrasonic noise might be ferrite beads or cores used for filtering that are vibrating. If so, it may be sign of good design.

Many cable companies near airports used to run the mid-band channels that fall on the aircraft frequencies 10 dB or so lower than the other channels - fearing leakage would bring an FCC visit - usually putting channel guides, or something similar, on those channels.
Click to expand...

Hah, that's clever. I seem to recall the cable companies in areas where I lived would do the same to any channel that fell over a part of the VHF high band where local police/fire comms were. I could never figure out why one particular channel on the cable lineup would be fuzzy at random times until it dawned on me it was our local fire department dispatching out a call. So anytime I saw herringbones on channel 18 (?) I knew they were headed out… and a minute later I'd hear the sirens!
 
Someone must have complained about falling down the steps in one of our buildings. Seems that most of the outside lights on that one are bad or dead. They recently replaced three of the dead sodium lights (the ones that have been "cycling" for 6 or 7 years), but did nothing about the dozens of other bad bulbs.
I thought, "Well, at least it's a start!"

Last week, I noticed that there was a nearly constant noise wiping out the entire MW and SW bands...sounded like a two-speed Dremel tool, toggling between high and low speeds. It went away, but now I get what sounds like a dump truck idling. It's so strong, it is even there with no antenna. I noticed today that the neighbors below me have completely lined their apartment with hundreds of feet of disco-style "rope lights"...thousands of individual LED bulbs, likely fed by a Chinese-made SMPS with all the filter components left out.
I can't win!
 
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