UPDATE 04/19 --- The noise had got even a lot worse a couple weeks ago. It was so bad then I expected to see a pole on fire any time. They finally found it, a bad transformer last Friday, 04/15 and got it fixed. The power company guy was probably as happy as I was as I've called him and he's been out here about once a week since this started.

Even then I still had fairly bad noise on 20m and some on the other freqs. This didn't surprise me as I've thought all along that there was two sources of noise as I've had noise on 20m all along, it was just overrode by the really bad noise that started the first week of Feb.

The power company guy came back out this morning to find the remaining noise. He couldn't find it on their lines so he hooked his machine into my antenna and cut the power to our house at the pole. No noise at all.

I robbed a battery out of a mower and hooked to the radio again. I tracked the remaining (and original noise since I've had a HF Radio) down to a Ebay or Amazon replacement power supply for my laptop. With it unplugged I have nothing but atmospheric noise.

Life is good.

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This started last Wednesday morning, 02/03. It was there when I turned the radio on. I've had one morning (Saturday) when it wasn't there for an a hour or two on 17m (still on 20m some), then it came back and a couple hours one night when it wasn't as bad (Sat too, I think). You can hear a few strong signals over the QRM, but even on them it gives them a real raspy sound. It's been in 20m for a few weeks now, but not as bad and now it's across the whole radio.

I brought in a battery and disconnected my electricity after the meter base. No change, so it's not something I'm running here that's causing it.

Here's a video I recorded of it. It's actually louder than it sounds as the phone mic is facing away from the radio and my voice facing toward it. My wife is sleeping so I can't turn it up more.

QRM

I pulled out a scanner, put it on a CB Freq, held it up to a window and it's coming in on  it too.

Any ideas where I go from here????

Since you're in Texas, I wonder if folks use heat pumps for heating in your area?  When my heat pump outside unit compressor comes on it puts out serious spurious emissions on many freqs 40m - 10m.  My outside unit is right outside my shack and near my antennas, and the spurs wipes out big portions of the bands when on.  I also get interfering signals from some of my neighbors heat pumps even when mine is off.  I live in a neighborhood of one acre lots, so none are too close, but I can still tell sometimes when they are on.

So I am curious, do you have near neighbors with heat pumps?

ETA:  Now that I have listened to your video, I suspect something else.  Maybe a bad power line transformer?

That's what I'm wondering, although if it is I don't think it's my transformer. I have metal siding so to get a radio signal in the house you have to hold something up to a window, barring an external antenna. If I hold the scanner up to a front window the noise is a good bit louder than at a  back window and my transformer is on a pole in my back yard.

What type of area do you live in?

Fox Hunt much?

Kind of in the country, but there's houses around but only one within a 100 yards or so.

No

Using your scanner.. Go outside and get a good strong signal on the noise..
Now remove the antenna. This will attenuate the noise either completely or significantly..
If the signal is gone.. Put a short piece on wire (2-3 inches) into the center pin & see if you got it..
The idea here is to get the signal but fairly weak. AND by holding the scanner close to you your body will also cause the signal to drop.
Now start turning around and listening for the source.. if it weakens its behind you.
If you suspect power lines and get close to a pole give it a good kick and see if the noise changes.
Walk by neighbors houses. again using your body to find the weak spot then look behind yourself.
It might take several trips to narrow it down but it will give you a better location on the source.
Any utility companies I've had to deal with have been excellent in resolving RFI issues.
I guess they don't want the FCC on their ass either.
Best luck & let us know if'n ya figure it out..
..FN..

Sounds like arcing in a power line insulator to me, AM radio and sledgehammer the local poles til you find one that makes a change in the noise, then call the power company.

Two things to check for in your shack.

Noisy switching transformers or LED lights.



I have a box full of these that I had to replace due to the RF interference they generate.

I fought the power company back in 2012 and after contacting the Illinois Commerce Commission and the FCC, the local power utility fixed my problem.

It sounds like something is arcing. FWIW, our power company is quick to respond to arcing. It cuts into their profit margin and usually means something is about to fail.
They figure it's better to schedule maintenance than have to do it late Saturday night in a snowstorm.

Give us a recording on AM.  Makes it easier to ID the noise.



FYI Ham Radio Deluxe (even the free one) gives you the option to record directly from the radio, if you have it interfaced to a sound card, like for digital modes.

I found this and when my radio is on AM they match up perfectly.

I also found this site with more info and it might be helpful to someone else.

http://www.powerlinenoise.com

The only reason I own a VX-7R and an Arrow handheld Yagi is to locate powerline noise.  I have the cell number of the engineer at the power company that fixes it too.  

My budget doesn't go that far.

It's even worse today.

QRM

I called the power company yesterday and somebody is supposed to get back to me about it today or tomorrow. We'll see if they actually do.

Totally sounds like arcing from loose hardware or a damaged insulator.  Hopefully your power company has folks that know what is going on and how to fix the issue.



 

Yep. I've had similar problems from an insulator on a power pole 1/4 mile away.
You may need to find the pole (s) yourself before the power company  techs get there. Most of the time they drive around your area with AM radio on in their truck. Very few companies have special equipment and a person who knows how to diagnose RF noise problems.

My Dad is a retired lineman he suggests driving your road/street with your car radio on am to narrow your search for the problem pole or equipment. The noise should get louder the closer you get to the trouble if indeed it's a power company trouble. Note the pole number and pass that info onto your power company.

When I got back on HF in 2011 I had noise about that bad most of the time too.  Based on your videos I suspect the source is pretty close, probably a pole within 500' of your antenna.  Try the car radio on AM or any portable AM radio to locate the offending pole.  You may have more than one source too, I know I did here.  Still have two intermittent ones but they act up so rarely that we haven't gotten them fixed yet.

It's probably just one source (I hope). I had this QRM start on 20m a while back with a little on 80m and 40m but only 20m was enough to somewhat interfere with reception and it didn't get any worse after it started. Then last Wednesday I got up and turned the radio on to find what I have now except it was even worse this morning.

If it keeps increasing at the rate you mention then you'll know what's causing it fairly soon.
You'll either see smoke, flames or hear the explosion when a pole pig goes up.
Don't be close by if that's the case.. they can be quite impressive..

Sorry bout the vertical vid..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBgzONlnAxI

Some videos are better vertically, this one counts for that IMO.

Still haven't heard from the power company so I guess I'll get to call them back tomorrow, meanwhile until they fix it my HF radio is useless. I didn't expect it to get fixed real soon but it would be nice to talk to someone who knows what I talking about like the CS person answering the phone was supposed to get me yesterday or today.  Up to now I've been fairly impressed with our Coop as they have stayed on top of things so I still have hope for the best.

Maybe I'll get lucky and it actually will catch on fire and they'll have to fix it.

We have issues with cheap china made grow lights around here (for indoor weed grows).

I use a battery-powered portable AM radio to track down noise

Late to the thread but agreed, sounds like power line noise from arcing.

The power company should be motivated to fix it, the arcing is a serious drain of power.

Pick a frequency on AM on your car radio that does not have a strong signal and drive around, you should be able to detect what power pole is the source. If you go out at night you can usually see the arcing for confirmation.

Thanks to someone else's suggestion to do this too I found them. Yes, them. The pole in my back yard with a transformer that my electrical service comes from and the pole across the road right in front of my house are fine. The next pole to the right from my driveway is putting out a good bit of noise and the next pole to the left from my house is putting out a LOT of noise. The next pole further on down from this pole may be putting out some noise but it's hard to tell because of all the noise from the previous pole.

My guess would be the pole to the right has been putting out the noise that I've had for a while but the bad noise that crippled my radio Wed. a week ago is coming from the pole to the left. I called the woman at the power company I'd talked to back late this afternoon since I'd been told someone would call me before now. Evidently I'd slipped through the cracks as nobody had got the help ticket she put in like they should have. I gave her the pole numbers and she said she would make sure someone got the help ticket if they hadn't by Tuesday. Well see again.

Still no call back from the power company and the noise is even worse, now. It's at least S9 on all HF bands and a good bit more than that on 80m. The noise is now even in my 2m FM which I didn't think could happen. I may get to see that pole on fire after all. The bad thing is it's probably less 10 to 15 feet away from a small, wooden house and everything is dry as a bone here right now.

hope this gets settled soon. I lucked out and only had an u-verse cable box and old ass LCD(Ithink) TV giving me s-4 to s-6 noise when I started. I thought it was the power lines 300 feet west of me or the transformer in my back yard. Luckily it wasn't. I hope they fix it and the pole doesn't blow up!

I had a pole arcing so bad once that the S meter on my dual band would blip up to about S5 when I drove by that pole on 440. It would almost peg the S meter on 2m. It got fixed.

BTW, shouldn't the thread title be QRN instead of QRM?

I debated with myself about that. I thought "N" was natural and "M" was man made so I went with "M"

N is noise, M is interfering signals.

Yea, that pole has a transformer on it and it it goes up it's goes up it's probably going to take that little house with it. I would imagine as dry as it is even some good sparks would set their grass on fire and if no one is home that would probably get ugly too.

Given the concern with proximity to a vacant house and dry conditions maybe a heads up call to the local fire station would be in order.. I'd hate to see someone loose a home over it.. Perhaps the FD can persuade the utility company to get on the ball.
I've had outstanding response time from out local util co on any calls I've made.
Good Luck & be safe..

Please DO NOT EVER HIT UTILITY POLES FOR ANY REASON!

Mike Martin (K3RFI) of RFI Services did a fantastic day-long seminar on (surprise!) RFI at the ARRL Centennial a couple of years ago.  One of the stories he mentioned was him hitting poles with a hammer and having a piece of the pole's electrical hardware fall into AND THROUGH his hard hat that nearly killed him, much to the horror of the long term care facility residents across the street.  Between that and showing that there is sometimes over 100V on the "ground" conductor of a utility pole, it is best to steer well clear of physical contact with all utility equipment.  In fact, Mike says that more RFI problems are caused by people hitting the poles than are solved even if you don't get hit by a falling object or bring the whole pole down as one idiot Mike described in a story had done after hitting the pole for years.

The best thing to do is to locate the source of the noise using the techniques in the ARRL's RFI Handbook or other similar literature and submit that information to the utility in question.  If you don't get a good response, start looking up people in management on LinkedIn or Google and keep asking the question until someone does something about it.  They eventually will if for no other reason that the regulatory authorities may eventually get involved.  Mike Gruber at the ARRL is another RFI guy you may be able to e-mail for some advice (if he has the time!), or you can hire Mike Martin or one of the other guys around that do this kind of thing.

How inexpensive and compact I could put together a foxhunt rig for such devices?

I was actually wondering about something like this. Take something like This built in a small metal enclosure with an antenna jack for a directional antenna and an earphone jack. Change the freq to be above the AM broadcast band so you don't have to worry about AM stations (all you want is static anyway) and a control to vary the sensitivity. I wouldn't think a directional antenna would be that hard to build, either.

The power company came out this morning and told me they're bringing in a machine and the guy that runs it from somewhere else in the coop's area that they hook to the lines that tells them where the problems are and they will find and fix it no matter how many poles are involved. This is supposed to happen tomorrow or Monday. Once again, we'll see.

I though it might be hard to convince them there even was a problem but the power company guy said he had the truck radio on an AM talk radio station and the static messed up his radio before he got to my house. He also said they had been out in this area a few days ago and there is another place up the road a little bit from me that messed the truck radio up there too.

Good news!  Keep us posted.



 

The guy looking for the powerline noise was supposed to be here Monday morning but didn't show until today, Friday. He decided it was on the one pole I didn't hear any noise under and said said the repair guys will be out Monday (where have I heard that before) to fix that pole. If I still have noise they will come out and look for another pole, rinse and repeat.

I'm hoping I can catch the repair guys when they come and get them to look at pole with the worst noise I found while they're here. They probably don't want to keep coming back, either. It should help if the same repair guy that was here the other day is one of those that comes out as he knows about AM radio noise finding. If they fix that one pole and there's still noise on his radio maybe he'll look a little further while he's here.

Did this guy hook his receiver to your antenna?

The quest for a radio continues.

They actually did show up Monday and reworked the pole across the road from my house that I didn't hear any noise at. They turned off our electricity at that pole and reworked half of it, then stopped for lunch, turning the power back on while they were at lunch. About half the noise was gone and 20m which hasn't ever really been usable was then somewhat usable over the lesser noise. After their lunch the power was turned back off and they finished that pole. When they finished and turned the power back on, except for 20m, the noise was almost right back where it was.

They then decide that the noise was on the pole in my back yard (another one I didn't hear anything on with the car AM radio) but couldn't come back until Wednesday. I had to take down part of my fence so they could get their lift truck in my yard and they redid every connection on that pole. Surprise, surprise, no change what so ever.  

By then you could tell they were getting discouraged but told my they weren't giving up and would be back but couldn't tell me when.  This was yesterday afternoon. Last night about 9pm I turned the radio back on just on hopes. Sometime between when they were here and 9pm something had broke loose, shorted or something. Solid noise far worse than ever. Up to S30 on 80m and 40m. Bad on everything else and it's a harsher, more clearly defined AC buzz. Almost like if you could put a speaker directly across a power cord.

I called the guy in charge of this fiasco today and told him the news. Supposedly they will be back here tomorrow or Monday.

The guy in charge has some good equipment and it is finding noise but I think he probably has the sensitivity turned up way too high. I was watching almost over his shoulder while he did the pole in my yard. It was picking up noise and was extremely directional, but once it was fixed there was no change in my radio, even though my 71' and 135' antennas are not very far away.  Maybe now they will actually do something about the two poles that my car radio picked up noise from, the poles on either side of the first one they reworked.

They had assumed when they while they were working on the first pole their moving the wires around  to my yard pole may have been part of the reason for it to start making noise, but they were also moving around the wires to the two poles that I thought all along were the noise makers. I think this is what caused the initial noise reduction and then the worsening.

That was to be the next step after the failure yesterday and he was going to record it and put it on an oscilloscope. Before the guy left yesterday he verified his connectors would fit my antenna. Now I don't know after it got far worse last night.

Yep, you have multiple sources.  They fixed at least 5 or 6 here and I still have at least two very intermittent ones.  My neighborhood is older, and we had 110+ MPH straight line winds back in 1998 that didn't help the aerial power infrastructure.  Keep working with them, having them connect their radio to your antenna and storing a signature will help them find the most offending one first.  Repair and repeat until you have normal background noise.

Have you considered asking around your local ham community for help to DF the noise? Someone may have a proper radio and a directional antenna.
You reckon yout neighbors may be running high power lights to grow herbs indoors?  It usually sounds different but who knows...

They're finding noise. The guy has great equipment. I think he's finding too much noise. It looked like he found a lot of noise on the pole in my back yard, but as it turned out none of it was getting into my radio and one of my antennas run within 30' of the pole. Neither of the poles they have reworked put out enough noise to be detected on my car AM radio but the two poles it did pick up are the next pole each way, one a lot louder than the other. He found noise on the two that they reworked and convinced himself that was the problem. I think he needs to turn the gain down and find the loudest pole and so forth.

The easiest way to locate power line noise is with a radio that can receive AM on the 440 band, and a small 440 yagi antenna. Walk around and you can tell exactly what particular parts on the particular poles are the source of the noise.

I just use an AM radio and a 16 lb sledge.  Whack!!!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttt!!!!!

The power company guy has good equipment. He used two different antennas, one like this, but it was a little bigger and looked like a log-periodic.


and the other was one of these.


Both attached to a bigger receiver with a cable and didn't have a receiver on them like the two in the pictures above.

The second one was extremely directional and had a sight on it. It would pretty much pick up which connection on the pole was making the noise. He's finding noise, just not the pole that's making the vast majority of the noise. I think if he would turn the sensitivity of the receiver down and check out a couple more poles the worst one would stand out. So far the only noise that has been fixed is some that was on 20m and that was only for a few hours. It think the only reason that happened is because they shook the wires going to the worse pole working on the first one. Both of the poles I picked up noise on the car radio are the poles to each side the first one they redone.

It seems to me it would work better if they would find and fix the worse pole first. Any improvement they they might have  made is not able to be heard as everything is being drowned out by the much worse one. At least some of the noise they have fixed I never heard anyway. I would much rather they work their way down than up. I would be much happier (I'd have an at least somewhat usable radio)  and they would look like they're accomplishing something.