Yes! Found It.

I wrote earlier in the week about a disturbing amount of power line noise. It had sprung up sometime in the last couple of weeks and was a deafening S9++ on 160m. Not good at all for the start of the low-band season.

A day later, I had an opportunity to try scope it out. I found the noise was readily apparent on an AM broadcast radio. In my car, I tried to find the noise, but found it diminished greatly when I left the driveway, and returned once I parked my car near the church. This mean that it was very local, it wasn't something propagating along the power lines in the front yard.

Getting a little portable broadcast radio, the noise was quite loud in the shack, but diminished as I walked to the church. This meant the noise was likely coming from the parsonage itself.

Next step was to flip every breaker off in the parsonage as I listened to the radio. Of course, once I flipped the very last breaker, the noise disappeared. Turning all the other breakers back on -- no noise.  Then it was a matter of deducing what was being powered from that circuit breaker.

The circuit breaker in question, number 15, was powering a few outlets that supplied power to my internet router and other pieces of equipment on my wife's desk. A bit more unplugging found that the parsonage wiring wasn't the culprit, but something plugged into the wall. A bit more, and the cause was found -- it's a wall wart power brick that powers my AT&T Microcell.

When we got the Microcell back 3 years ago, the coverage underneath the parsonage's metal roof was extremely bad. Since then, it has gotten a little better. Until I can replace the bad power brick, we can live without the Microcell.

And no more noise on 160m. Hurray!

Crap. Line Noise

OK, perhaps I could use stronger language. Here it is, the start of the fall low-band DX season, and I have line noise.

In the three years I've been out here in Floyd county, the low bands have been very quiet, so it has been easy to hear other stations. You'd think being out in the country like this it would stay that way.

Well, something has changed in the last week or two. On 160m, I'm reading constant line noise 24/7. In an SSB bandwidth, it is S9+20. In a CW bandwidth, it is still S9. Terrible. On 80m, it is a little better, about S7 in SSB, and S5 in CW -- about the same level as the atmospheric noise. Above 80m, I don't notice it, really.

It's been very dry, as is typical of this part of the fall here in Georgia. However, even a recent downpour didn't silence the noise.

This is very bad. I guess I'll have to hunt down the source and tell Georgia Power about it. I sincerely hope they can fix it before the ARRL 160m contest.

Not One, But Two.

I've written my story before, about how I got started in the martial arts. At that time, I'd just started to train in Tae Kwon Do and Hap Ki Do.

Doing more than one discipline is difficult. While you'd think that the general principles of one would reinforce the other, there's also things that get in the way - prior learning that you have to unlearn and re-learn anew. It becomes a struggle to keep it all straight, to differentiate between styles.

You can't just rely on habit, you have to build new habits, one for each style.

I've kept at it. It's taken almost three years, but this week I tested for my Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. I now hold two black belts - the other being second degree in Tang Soo Do. Not bad for a 53 year old guy who started training six and a half years ago.

Naturally, I'm not stopping. I'm going to continue to train so long as my body and my financial situation allows. There's still a black belt in Hap Ki Do to pursue, as well as higher degrees in these disciplines.

Find something you love doing, and keep doing it.

It Pays to Think Out of the Box

I was trying to contact W1AW/7 in Oregon today on 10m SSB. He was operating simplex, and he definitely had a heck of a pileup. Of course, 10m skip being what is was, I couldn't hear most of that, so it wasn't so bad working simplex. It was nice and orderly, if a little slow.

Well, I'm getting beat out over and over, considering all I have is my 100 watts from the Elecraft K3/100, going to the 160/80/40m Inverted-L. Who knows what the SWR or radiation pattern is like on 10m.

Anyway, I'm just getting settled in, when he announces "QRX 5 minutes." Just my luck, I think -- I finally get this guy dialed in and he's taking a break. Well, I sit there for a few minutes checking up on Facebook or whatever while I'm listening. And he doesn't come back. I look at the clock, and it's been eight minutes. I figure, what the heck, I'll give him a call or two. I have nothing to lose.

    "Whiskey One Alpha Whiskey Stroke Seven from Alpha Alpha Four London Radio"

Silence. OK, one more time.

    "Whiskey One Alpha Whiskey Stroke Seven from Alpha Alpha Four London Radio"

    "Alpha Alpha Four London Radio from Whiskey One Alpha Whiskey Stroke Seven you're five-nine in Oregon ...."

And, BAM, I'm in his log. Apparently, they were just changing operators and I caught the new guy just as he was sitting down. Immediately after, the impenetrable pile-up cranks back up.

Sometimes, you don't need big power or fancy antennas, just being at the right place at the right time.