Malibu got some snow a few days ago.
cuhulin

In article . com,
says...
How did you figure out that transformer was the cause? I have a very
similar problem--horrible RFI when it's _cold_ outside. I figured it
must be a neighbors heater, but now you've got me thinking.

-Art

BDK wrote:

Could be a nearby transformer going sour when the sun goes down. I had
one about a half mile away from me that put out all kinds of hash when
the sun went down, or when it got below 60 degrees or so. It wasn't
horrible when it was warmer out, but when it got cold, wow!


Lightning took care of it one night, after about 2 years of the local
power company telling me "It's on the list".

BDK



It had this weird pattern to it, it was something like. BUZZZT,
BUZZZZZZZZT, BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTT! I always thought
it sounded like someone welding.

The last buzz of the three really went a long time. Over and over again.
I was walking my dog one night, and under a transformer that always
loudly hummed, came the same noises in the same pattern. I went home and
got my almost deaf portable AM radio, and it was easy to track it down.
I called the power company the next day, and go the usual BS. It was
worth losing power for a few hours to finally get it changed. I wonder
how much longer it would have been buzzing away if it hadn't gotten
blasted off the pole.

Before that, the next door neighbor's dimmer was killing me. Insane
noises all over the lower bands. I finally went over one night, and
changed it out for them, no charge. The woman next door was from London
and when I told her I listened to the BBC, she got all excited and went
out and bought a RS DX-440 to listen to it.

BDK

I just installed a whole house full of RadioRA. Those things are
terrible. Not only the dimmers but there are little "repeater boxes" in
the house too and if you turn them off the remote keypads won't work.
Now that entire house buzzes in every radio.

gb

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government
has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a
crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."

-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

tom k in L.A. wrote:
hombres, we have dimmers up the ying yang in this house. lutron
maestro's plus radio ra. oy vey. is my shortwave hobby doomed?

On Jan 20, 7:39 pm, craigm wrote:

DJ wrote:

Dimmer switch?

what in tarnation am i doing wrong?

please help!

thanks.Street lights?

The married Irish woman I chat with via email,she lives about sixty
something miles Southwest (Bognor Regis,West Sussex County) of London.If
she ever moves to America,I doubt if she would ever be interested in
listening to England ever again.
cuhulin

Normally I get all sorts of buzzing, rasping, crackiling noise over the
whole RF spectrum. I have identified some of them. Some of the
fluorescent light bulbs put out an awful racket. The can be sniffed out
with a portable radio and replaced with quiet ones. All light dimmers
are replaced with off/on switches. The Neptune washing machine has a dc
motor so no washing while I am trying to listen. But in spite of these
efforts there was still lots of RF noise at about a S5 level.
One night we had an ice storm that took out the power line. The RF
silence was deafening. I could hear dx station clearly for the first
time. Brother Stair, Alex Jones, EWTN, they were all in there ( just
kidding) But there were still RF noises that could only be on the
phone line. Unmodulated carriers, beedeleebeedelee sounds. all up and
down the dial, but not wideband like the electrical racket. Then the
phone lines went out when another tree went down. At last! no RF
racket. I started logging dx for the first time in years. Then the
power came back on and it all went away. So there are three sources of
RF racket:
(1) Things inside your house (and neighbour's)
(2) the power lines
(3) the phone lines
The only fix that worked was to put up a sloper at the back of the lot
and run 150ft of co-ax to the house. There is still a little hash,
about S2 but it is the best I can do.