Take a portable to your fuse box and pull one switch at a time.

Back suddenly 04:53 in the middle of a sentence. I didn' realistically expect an announcement at the back end, and I wasn't there at the start to hear if anything was said.

I recorded unattended after noting a really strong Mexican anthem and also logging Kalamazoo MI. One day I'll get to the recording. Probably nothing more than what IU had from over an hour if livelistening - the rotation of stations was pretty clear.

 

darcyh wrote:

turkeytop wrote:

Good stuff. My MW is terrible tonight. I'm getting some local interference all over the dial. I think it must be coming from something right in our house.

It is just about impossible to listen to anything but a strong MW signal within a house any longer. All those damn switching power supplies and computer equipment. It never used to be that way nor should it be now. It started with florescent lights, TV receivers and escalated with lamp dimmers. They wiped out the entire AM band.


 

On another board there was a report of someone who tracked down the source of interference in his home. It was coming from a new coffee maker. It wasn't in use at the time, just plugged in. He pulled the plug and the interference went away.
 

When I walk the dog with the radio and headphones on, there is one house on the corner of my street where all AM signals, no matter how strong, just disappear into a cacophony of buzzing and noise. I'm not sure what's going on in that home, but it only happens at night. So whatever they have that's throwing out this electrical interference - likely a light of some kind is my guess - happens after dark. 

It's so strong, it even causes problems on the other side of the street, but only near that one place. 

At first I thought it might be a defective street light, but that would not entirely explain the noise staying strong and only abating when you get around the corner from this place. I'm guessing no one in there listens to AM radio, so they probably have no idea it's going on, nor would they care. 

But I'd love to know what it is. 

Almost always caused by 1) Poorly designed /  grounded / shielded switching power supplies. 2) Poorly designed / shielded / coupled / grounded oscillators. This stuff can be defeated but it will cost you time / money to do so. And these damn supplies are in just about every device. The RF saw tooth waves travel through the house's electrical wires like water through a pipe and right into the RF detector of the receiver. Hell some of the switching supplies will even wipe out local FM. Cheap LED bulbs have made thongs worse too.

In the day most things used an analog (transformer) power supply that does not generate all the RF noise, but they have been replaced by switching supplies to save 2 cents. FWIW a switching supply can be built to operate without generating more noise than a solar flare but it costs money and no one cares. This is exactly why the electric car makers want to ditch the AM band. 

All this RF noise is a direct cause of the decline in AM broadcast. It did not have to be this way and the blame falls squarely on the US FCC for not nailing the rascals that produced this garbage.  The FCC had the power to refuse it into the USA. Accountablily from the the governement? Surely you jest.

By the early 1980's and the advent of computers the Genie was out of the bottle. And today no one benefits.

I can't even turn an AM radio on in my shop and even an outside antenna is noisey. Running DC sometime helps.
 

Last edited by darcyh (December 21, 2023 10:29 pm)