'Tis the season for silly neighbours, fah-lah, etc. etc.

Well the winter season is rushing upon us and I was looking forward to a bit of further activity on the lower HF bands with my recent antenna.
(Which up to now has been working surprisingly fantastically for it's short stature.)

Lo and behold I switch the radio on first thing and I have S6 of mains hum modulated RF noise all over 160 & 80m!!  

Shouldn't complain, if I take my carefully placed chokes and filters out it's almost S9+20!!!

Battery backup with mains off gives me exactly the same result....bugger.


One of the neighbours obviously has something 'new' (undoubtedly Chinese in nature) plugged in. Probably Halloween related.

Can't wait until they string up the megawatts, light up the whole village Christmas lights fairly shortly. ("I wish it could be Christmas every day" or at least from October to January!)

Go and discuss it with them? Yeah, tried that once a couple of years back, wholly unsuccessfully. Last Christmas I just gave up.


I wouldn't mind but I have no visible antennas hanging around, no cables, wires, mahoosive antenna towers or other such and have done everything in my power to ensure I emit no spurious RF with my piddly 10 Watts and balanced antenna system. Anything for a quiet village life.

Being 'considerate' is obviously a one way street.


Roll on January but at least I have the other bands.....for now(?)

For those of you experiencing such QRM from neighbourly activities, my heartfelt sympathies are definitely with you.

yes that's the direction i go in these days Victor several years ago i didn't bother too much but now i do we are getting older

I just bought two of those USB bulbs, don't half put a load of rubbish.
40m on a IC705 in the same room is a sight to behold.

Only going to use them as emergency lights so not to bothered.

I know Christmas is normally very noisey RF wise and more so this year as I have a few strings of those USB Christmas lights.

Well some good news....

One neighbour has been very accommodating and investigations are under way.

The other has announced that their landing lights strip for Santa will be a no-go this winter due to electricity costs.

Bonus!!

You are so lucky Victor.
Linda lover her lights not christmas ones but outside ones.
She has a 10mtr rope light no sorry 2 of them.
But then the decking has a 100mtr string of 800 yes 8 hundred led lights that cover the railings strung back and forth over and over then they head off to the big wooden swing round and round.
And the last 10mtr or so are in the cherry tree.
They are on a smart plug that is so easy to change the timing so as the nights draw in the lights come on earlier and earlier. 
So as the light starts to fail i lock up the shack no point lol.

Oh No!

You have my sympathies Alan mate.

Luckily my Teresa isn't into such stuff and I still have to reassure her that there is no problem sticking the vacuum on if I'm in my radio room. Bless her.

I've decided that my best route from now will be to beef up my station a bit to prevent such problems as usually the neighbours are completely unaware and innocent to such stuff. It is just my hobby after all and the manufacturers should really be taking responsibility for such nonsense.

I've done well to reduce much of the QRM down by several S-points but still feel I can do better. Problem is, now I've got to dig behind this desk and shelving unit to reach my homebrew mains filter!!!
(Not easy with a gammy leg.)

I've got some more ferrites I've dug out after noticing I still get mains borne noise up the electrics earth connection and realised I'd filtered the heck out of the live and neutral only. That'll learn me!