Rick wrote:
I have been wrestling with power line noise here for almost a year.
Power company hasn't been very successful in locating it so I started a
coordinated search
on my own. Thinking if I can tell them for certain which poles have the
problem they can confirm and maybe fix.

The noise is a deafening 20 over 9 on 80 meters which makes DXing on 80 and
160 impossible.
The noise can be heard at my QTH as high as 10 and 6 meters but it isn't
troublesome on those bands because it can only be heard at about an S7 level
when the yagi is pointed at 210 degrees.
I thought maybe my means of analysis might be interesting to discuss and
maybe others would have other suggestions.

There are 7000 volt lines running on a highway past my house. Tracking the
source on 80m seems impossible.
I made a 2 ft square loop antenna, which has some directivity but the noise
level using it seems to not change
much as I travel the highway. On 10 meters, using a 4 ft whip on the car,
the noise is also hard to localize but
seems to increase in the vicinity of 1 mile from home. 6 meters using a
whip is similar. I found that if I'm close
enough that the 6 meter signal is around S7 I can switch to 2 meters and
again peak the noise by driving slowly up and down the road.

So using this technique and driving 2 miles in each direction I have managed
to find 2 spots, one on the highway and one on a cross road, each about 1.2
miles from the QTH. I then built a 432 MHz 8 element quagi beam which
enabled me to pinpoint the offending pole at these two locations. (I have
put a LOT of effort into this project !)

At this time I am waiting (hoping) for a return call from the power company
to verify my dicovery.

So my question for the group - Can either of these locations 1.2 miles
distant cause such horrendous noise levels on 80 meters? Is it possible
that a weaker noise source much closer to me is the culprit or are all of
the power line malfunctions detectable on 440 MHz?

There was an article in QST (or was it CQ?) about building a ultrasonic
"downconverter" to listen for noise sources. Yup, sound.. Many (most?)
Power pole RFI sources are mechanical in nature, and have an ultrasonic
component.

re the Power company. They might be more cooperative if they knew that
you could involve the F.C.C. Especially if you decided to "help" them by
finding many more sources of noise.