Interfearance from Arcing Lamppost.

Good News,

The Electicians have been and investigated that noisy lampost I've spoken of.

Turns out, that someone had installed a ballast bulb [a bulb with its own internal ballast] into a fitting with an already fitted ballast, meaning there were then two ballasts which would both fight against each other, causing mass RFI.

The Electrician said he was 'shocked' by the discovery.

Soon replaced, and checked the connections, switched it on and asked me to test my radio, and ......no more crackles  ! Woo Hoo !

Nice one.
Did it take long to get them to sort it out.

Alan Pilot wrote:

Nice one.
Did it take long to get them to sort it out.

 Nope, it only took the electrician a few minutes to see what the problem was. 
All done in about 15 minutes.
 Just shows when someone knows what they are doing, it makes all the difference.

I meant how long after reporting it sorry.

Alan Pilot wrote:

I meant how long after reporting it sorry.

Lol,, sorry, yes about 2 months or so.

Well done Andy. You have proven there is hope for other people if they are experiencing similar issues.

2 months, if they hadn't sent a less than competent engineer in the first place the whole thing would have been avoided. A catapult sounds like a far faster solution to me, I bet they would have fixed it quick-sharp too. The bulbs with built in ballasts I have seen are the same E40 fitting but you would just know not to fit it into a ballasted feed, it wouldn't drive it properly and would more than likely damage quite an expensive bulb.

I had complained about it last year, but the council were not interested as no-one else was affected by it. It was only after I managed to video it flickering and upload the clip to the Council, which was impossible as they do not cater for digital uploads, so I managed to send the clip via an employee's email in the end, then it was 2.5 months of waiting, as well as persist with the complaint several times.
I knew 100 % it was the lampost, for doing the short antenna trick, and the fact when it was switched on, the crackles would be 100% worse [made up percentage, but extreemly annoying].
Glad it's fixed now, radio reception is soooo much cleaner now.  

@ Alan-Mirror man, I had considered opening up the service door and switching it off completely, but that would be naughty.

I did a around the home search for items that caused interference with my radio's, power off at fuse box/radio on a batrery, by far the worst offenders were modern LED lights I am surprised to say. A couple of ferrite rings on the power feed of each lamp in both mix 43 and 31 (I think/ off the top of my head) quieted them down a great deal(a balanced 4 turns on each side of the ring)
They replaced the street lights near me with LED lamps, it appears every third one is also a 5G repeater and I have taken some quite high EMF readings coming out of them too with a meter, high enough I would have thought to warn children not to hang ago around that one at least. They open with the triangle keys, long nosed pliers can get them if you don't have the key, I think I'd of donned a mask and done it.

Unfortunately, we can no longer rely on local authorities to take care of things in a timely fashion, I have never known such incompetence as we see around us today, but we mustn't say anything last we "offend" Intelligent people are literally being censored so "Idiots" don't take offence? If they had sent out a competent tech in the first place there would have been no need for any of it, that truly is a "rookie" mistake, it is incredibly obvious when a lamp has a built in ballast and you know you are going to damage it if you get it wrong.

I couldn't believe how much interference modern living caused to my radio, only strong local stations could be heard over S9 of interference. Back in the day it was you who was concerned about TVI or the whole host of products that used 27Mghz such as cordless phones, baby monitors, remote controls, now it's the endless ammount of wireless/Bluetooth devices and cheaply made electronic gadgets that affect the radio. The one good thing it did allow was they relaxed to laws so we can have SSB multimode without any issue so I feel it's a fair trade off if you take the time to due your so diligence in hunting down the offending (interfering) articles.