re power signal surges in home gstovall crchh nosubdomain nodomain greg stovall writes anyway over the weekend i was resting on the sofa in between chores and noticed that i briefly picked up what sounded like ham radio traffic over my stereo and television even though both were off also all the touch sensitive lights in my house start going wacko cycling through their four brightness states i presume that some ham operator with an illegal amplifier drove past my house i live on a busy thoroughfare would this be a correct presumption what kind of power must he be putting out to cause the effects the affected equipment is about feet from the road hams can legally run up to watts it is very unlikely however that a ham would be running that kind of power from a car ham rigs for cars put out around watts it is possible that a watt radio would cause interference to consumer electronic feet away most tvs stereos and vcrs have very poor rf shielding if you experience the problem frequently it may be caused by a ham cber or other radio operator in a base station nearby the interference may have been caused by a radio transmitter used for other purposes such as police fire etc if you heard voices over your stereo i think you are correct in assuming that the source is an rf transmitter if you have frequent trouble you may want to try the rf ferrite chokes available at radio shack the interference is probably being picked up by your speaker wires and those chokes can be installed on the wires very easily without cutting them good instructions are included with the chokes if that does not solve the problem you may want to search your neighborhood for a radio operator look for antennas on the roof or car talk to him her about your problem there are things a radio operator can do to reduce interference randall rhea informix software inc project manager mis sales marketing systems uunet pyramid infmx randall
