You may remember I invited Ofcom (Office of Communications) to investigate some local QRM giving me major grief on the Amateur Bands, well the TV Masthead Preamp PSU on the house at the end of the street has now been replaced, and the drifting noise on 15m now has gone… BUT.. I quickly realised that was not the main cause. I invited Ofcom back and asked them to investigate further as I still have total wipe out S9+20 on all bands about 3 hours every evening.
Ofcom now require a test done to make sure that the interference is 6db higher than the noise floor before they can take the case on. Not easy as the noise is in the evening and Ofcom work 9-5. Luckily during the day there are sprogs on 20m and various other parts of the HF spectrum for the guys to test. Happy that i have a case they went away to DF the little sprog. Got him! A Plasma TV a few doors away! Oh no!
The field engineer comes back to tell me the bad news, however he says that the first stage is to encourage the owner to compliance. Also his Office will send out further equipment to test the field strength of the Plasma TV to prove that it exceeds regulations. He says that if asking the owner to comply does not work then they will take the action of enforcement if it is required.
On a plus side the owner of the Plasma says that they are moving house at the end of April! Bonus!!! But the Ofcom engineer says that the case will stay live even when they move as the equipment MUST be repaired or replaced.
