Oh No, Not Another Project!

As I have been feeling very overwhelmed lately, you would think the last thing I need is another project or demand on my time and mental resources. On the other hand, maybe a temporary shift of focus can help? My focus has shifted and has been all about one thing now for several days. I have announced that I am putting everything else on hold until further notice.

My radio hobby has always been one of the main tools in my arsenal to beat stress and anxiety. But for the past few years it has slowly been eroding away, in large part due to increasing noise hindering radio reception in my area. In the winter, some of this noise is from a neighbor’s furnace which has developed some sort of problem. But noise from power lines has been on the increase for several years and has reached the point of being a major hindrance to radio operation. This is a year round problem which is now affecting everything I do with my hobby.

Power lines generating radio noise is very common. It is usually the result of loose, corroded, or damaged hardware which causes tiny electrical arcs. Federal Communications Commission regulations require power companies to fix such problems, but getting them to do it is not always easy.  Years ago,when I was a little more able to deal with contacting others, etc. I went through a long battle with my local power company over such issues. Even getting the FCC involved didn’t really get a lot of action. Since then I had a defeatist attitude toward making any further attempts.

A couple weeks ago, I ran into an old friend at the hamfest. In passing I mentioned the noise problems. He said he had a friend who could request the power company get in touch with me and do something about it. I figured I might as well let him try and see what happened. I really didn’t expect it to go anywhere. But to my surprise I got a call from a power company troubleshooter about a week later. The essence of the conversation was that he is willing to come out here and fix problems, but he needs me to locate the offending poles. It seems they don’t really have the equipment to track down these problems. This man seemed friendly and sincere. He went out of his way to make sure I had his name and contact information. I said I would be happy to go out and locate noisy poles, and would contact him when I had the list ready for him. All the while I had doubts about my ability to pick up the phone and call him, but I decided to give this a shot.

Now I needed some sort of portable “noise sniffer” to go out and track down noisy poles. I could build such a unit from scratch if I had enough time, but I wanted to get moving sooner than that. I wanted to make it clear I am serious about wanting this fixed and willing to do my part. There is one company who sells a unit for this purpose. They have a reputation for design shortcuts and quality control issues, but usually a little “tweaking” (modification) of their products results in something really useful. So I ordered one, despite feeling I couldn’t afford it. The unit arrived two days later. After testing I found it useful but in need of enhancement to be a truly indispensable tool. So I immediately set about the work of enhancing it. The work took nearly a week, since I wanted the end result to work well and look professional.

The noise sniffer was ready at 6:30 on a Tuesday evening. I hit the road with it at 7:00, intending this to be a brief trial run. It didn’t quite turn out that way! I walked and I walked and I walked. I found noisy pole after noisy pole. I found some so noisy I couldn’t check their neighbors because of all the din. I don’t know how many miles I walked in total, much of it doubling back and forth in problem areas, trying to refine readings. I was at it more than five hours, arriving home exhausted shortly after midnight. I try not to imagine what passing motorists must have thought, seeing a guy wearing a reflective safety vest and headphones, pointing some really odd looking thing up in the air, sometimes stopping at a power pole and twisting the thing this way and that whilst walking slowly around said pole! But I had no visits from law enforcement so I guess I wasn’t perceived as an imminent threat! 🙂

I still have more areas to cover. The following day (yesterday) it rained, causing water to bridge all the tiny gaps in hardware and shut down the arcing. Hence there was no noise yesterday. Today has dawned bright. I plan to let everything dry out and go on another search this evening, when temperatures cool down (for sake of my comfort).

I’m very worried about whether I will be able to call the power company guy when I have finished my initial sweep and have the list of bad poles for him. Assuming he really is as sincere as he sounds, this would probably be an ongoing collaborative effort for some time. It is not realistic to expect all problems to be solved in the first round, for a number of technical reasons. Obviously if I fail the communication, nothing will get fixed and I will have wasted money on equipment. But setting everything else aside and making it known that I was doing this and nothing but this, at least for the time being, has helped reduce the stress burden. I’ve found focus. I have one thing to work on, and I am pursuing it with vigor.  Oh, and I’m getting a hell of a lot of additional exercise!