Re: [IRCA] Surge Protectors at your power box

["Bob Foxworth" <rfoxwor1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>  Noise sniffing goes w/hobby. CA, RI and FL - where lived - power
companies most helpful. Noise usually >unintentional. Line maint. dept.
handles noise & appreciates dx'ers' advance work. They say visible
phenoms - >arcing insulators - don't usually cause interference, but
they'll still fix 'em. Non-visible defects like bum lightning >arrestors
and 'shoes' - fittings binding primary lines to insulators - & bi-metal
joints in general are typical culprits.


Unworthy scribe knows whereof he speaks....

If you are lucky, your local electric utility will have a
Sprague noise detector. This is a receiver that hears
the acoustic signs of arcing at 40 kHz (ultrasound).
It has a very directional mic and hets the 40 kc
sound down to the audible band and outputs it
to a small speaker. The thing is so directional that
you can stand on the ground and identify which half
of the cross-arm has the sputtering insulator. You
pretty much need to have narrowed it down to a
couple of possibilities first (e.g. a half-city-block)
as a random search with this thing would take just too
much time. To see it work, as I did, is awesome.

LILCO on Long Island had one. Me, k2ygm and some
others in LIDXA were on first name basis with Bill B.
in Special Services, but they expected you to have
done your preliminary search first.

Usually when I called them was after I had visually or
audibly identified the arcing. Usually a tiewire across
the insulator hitting the wood crossarm, or a
cracked insulator. Going out on a search of the street
at 2 AM with binoculars was usually needed to pin
it down. They were always happy to fix these, and it
usually seemed to help the noise problem, sometimes
dramatically.  This was 20+ years ago. Maybe different
now. (such as, don't wander streets at 0200 nowadays)

Much of the 13 kv overhead was installed decades ago
and was getting somewhat ratty then. But it was all
just reactive mtce, due to the huge installed base.

If you had done your homework, they were very responsive.
Assuming you knew exactly whom to call!  Since they had
to send out a bucket truck, you did not want to cry "wolf" very
often.

- Bob



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