RFI used to be a big problem for amateur radio operators…at least in the eyes of the neighbors. So much so, that the popular cartoon, They’ll Do It Every Time, even lampooned us back in 1964.
After this cartoon was posted to the CWOps mailing list, many hams on the list shared their own stories. Here are a few, starting with mine:
When I was a kid, I only had one complaint about RFI. I was out in our backyard one day when a neighbor came to the fence and said, “Hey, Dan. Sometimes in the morning, I hear you sending Morse Code on my clock radio!” Being a kid, and not really knowing what I was doing, this kind of scared me, so I took this pretty seriously. Fortunately, the solution was relatively simple.
At the time, my antenna was a ground-mounted, 14AVQ vertical. Upon inspection, I found that somehow the threaded portion of the SO-239 connector on the bottom of the antenna had somehow cracked and broken away from the flange. I guessed that perhaps there was some arcing or some rectification going on there, which was causing the spurious emissions. I installed a new SO-239, and the problem went away.
This episode taught me to always inspect the connections first when you have a problem.
I was the main topic of discussion at our local Ham Radio club meeting…. I remember being kidded that some members said they saw my call letters appear on the local outdoor drive-in movie theater screen and could hear my CW coming through the car mic hanging on the drivers side window…. LOL — fun times!!!!
My father was a minister, and in one of the places we lived next door to the church which had an electronic organ. In those daze AM was “the” voice modulation. Even though he ran only about 100 watts AM, he had to be careful NOT to operate when the organist was practicing. He didn’t have a problem with Sunday Services though. :)
When I was in Spokane, WA, I put up a 60 foot tower and a three-element beam. A few days later I got the bang on the door with complaints of interference. I explained to the fellow all I had at that time was a receiver and NO transmitter!!
In 1967 right after graduating from high school and just prior to joining the Navy I was working part time in a hardware store. My mother in a panic called me at work to let me know that the FCC was there and wanted to inspect my station (DX100B – NC98 – 2 el quad).
My boss sent me home. The FCC had visually checked things out and asked me to fire up. They looked at some instrument (I assume it was a spectrum analyzer) and said everything looked fine. They were going to the neighbor who had complained of TVI and said they would probably call and have me transmit.
About 15 minutes later they returned to my parents home. While the neighbor told them she had a brand new TV and a good antenna on the roof, they found her using an old set with a 21mhz IF and a set of rabbit ears. They told me I was clean and if there were any further problems to refer the complaining party to the FCC.
Back in the day, I had a 5w A-M 6M transceiver, Lafayette or something. One day, a neighbor across the street called my mother and said she was hearing me talk on her TV. My mom yelled at me, and I told whoever I was working that “the old lady across the street was complaining about TVI.” About that time, it dawned on me that I was on AM, and she could understand everything I was saying. I got smacked on the head by my mom who was still on the phone with her. That was about 1960-ish.
Fortunately, RFI isn’t as big a problem as it used to be, especially now that most people have gone to cable TV. Even so, problems can crop up and you should be prepared. Try to be as cooperative as you can with your neighbors, and always have on hand a handful of snap-on ferrite chokes. You never know when they’ll come in handy.
Mike K8XF says
Great stories. When I was a kid, I had a next door neighbor that would open his window facing my driveway and holler when I got on 6M. He would watch channel 50, and his TV set was being overloaded by my 10W, 6m transmitter. I stopped operating when he watched Barney Miller re-run episodes at 7pm. This guy was a loud mouth and it was pointless explaining to him that he needed a highpass filter on his TV. Sounded like front end overload……his end. It’s great that most people are on cable now.
Don Keith says
Dan, back in the mid-1970s somebody wrote Dear Abby asking what to do about a “ham radio” neighbor that was wreaking havoc with the TV. Abby told the writer to report the problem to the FCC! And she even gave the address in Washington, DC.
I doubted it would help but I dashed off a letter to Dear Abby, telling her the neighbor may or may not be a “ham.” That was, after all, at the height of the CB craze and we were getting blamed often for problems caused by guys with dirty “leen – yers” and the like. I suggested that anyone having such an issue first locate the source and speak with the person. If it was truly a “ham,” he or she would likely be happy to help fix it, that the FCC would probably not provide a solution. But in most cases, it was the fault of the TV receiver, and there were ways to minimize such problems.
Believe it or not, she printed my letter in its entirety and apologized to amateurs for giving the wrong answer.
73,
Don N4KC
http://www.n4kc.com
http://www.donkeith.com
Jerry Stuckle says
I remember one time back in the early 70’s when a hospital in Des Moines had a ham station as a part of their rehab center. A nice station – Collins S-Line, tribander at 153′ and dipoles for 40 and 80 at 130′ (on top of the building). It was available to local hams as long as we didn’t interfere with their medical equipment (some of it was on the next floor up and quite sensitive). Evenings and weekends were pretty much unrestricted, though.
One year I decided to run Sweepstakes (SSB) from that station. 24 hours, Saturday and Sunday. Had a great time and scored a clean sweep. I didn’t report the score because I thought it would be unfair (but it turns out I would have scored quite high in the rankings).
To make a long story short, a couple of days later my mother was playing bridge and one of the other ladies told of a strange occurrence at their Sunday Morning service – in a church less than a block from the hospital. It seems they had all kinds of interference over their PA system – to the point the minister just gave up on his sermon :)
Fortunately, Mom didn’t say anything about it, but I never operated from there on Sunday morning again.
Dave New, N8SBE says
In high school in Murfreesboro, TN, I put up a home-brew 10-, 15-, and 20-meter 2-element bamboo spreader quad antenna on a 40 foot tower at my parents’ house, along with 40- and 80-meter inverted V’s on a 50 ft. push-up mast. Unfortunately, it attracted the attention of the next door neighbor. She referred to her garden hose as a ‘hosepipe’, and insisted that because her lawn mower had a gasoline engine it was ‘self-propelled’ (to set the stage for how difficult it might be to explain any interference to her).
That summer, there was strong propagation on the low VHF TV channels, such that on several occasions, I was able to pick up stations on channels 2, 3, and 4 from Florida, Maine, and Colorado, strong enough to interfere with or completely override the local Nashville stations (that were about 30 miles away).
Every time this happened, the neighbor would come over and lambaste me for interfering with her TV. Never mind that I wasn’t transmitting at the time. Just the evidence of my antennas was enough to convince her that I was at the root of her problems.
That fall, I went off to college, and took the antennas down. We never heard from her again.
Larry Koziel says
Here are a couple from Ann Arbor:
During a phone contest at W8UM when it was still in the East Engineering building, a number of us were in the shack (most of us EE students) when we got a phone call from the Wolverine Den — directly across Church St and probably not more than 50 yards from the station — to say that we were “coming in on the toaster.” We all thought that this was impossible, but one of the guys went over to check it out and came back to report that he did indeed hear sideband on their toaster!
Some years later, I had a multiband vertical up at a house that I rented with two other hams as roommates. I was on the air one day when fire trucks showed up at the next door neighbor’s house. Apparently the smoke alarm had gone off and the fire department was called, but they didn’t find any fire. I didn’t mention anything about having been on the air at the time. I assumed it was RFI, and I didn’t get on the air again on HF from that QTH. Shortly thereafter, the vertical folded over in a windstorm.
73,
Larry K8MU
Ken English says
Stumbled on to your thread. Many years ago I was assembling a set of portable OSCAR antennas on the lawn in front of my apartment.
A bunch of guys (obviously drinking) ran outside to accuse me of messing up their TV. I happened to have just come from talking to the Cable TV guys, who were tearing out the old SMATV System in the maintenance shed. I told the guys that there was no way my antenna could affect their cable TV since I didn’t have a transmitter, and sent them to talk to the Cable crew.
Peter says
Dad used to white out our tv and we could hear what was being said but picture was gone. Then mom would get on 2 meter with 50 watts under dads handle and gossiped with 5 minute mic sessions at a time. What could have been done with 5 watts. It was dads kin 5 miles down the country road who was ironically on a unlicensed walkie talkie.