When you collect and restore old radio equipment, it is of course fun to use them and listen to the airwaves. A lot of Wehrmacht equipment is designed to use pretty low frequencies, sets like the Lw.E.a, Torn.E.b, Mw.E.c all operate on long and medium wave frequencies, say up to 2 Mhz. Also most radio direction finder equipment operates on these frequencies so in theory there is a lot of equipment that can be enjoyed listening to these frequencies. But can they?
As I write this posting on my computer, a digital signal passes to my ADSL modem. This box connects to my telephone line, which -like in most parts of rural France and the UK- runs to the nearest telepohone pole on my road and runs overhead for a couple of kilometers to the nearest telephone node. ADSL, clever and useful as it is, uses the frequency spectrum up to 1.1 Mhz. This bandwidth is split in many channels, each of which is tested by my modem to pick the best after which it relentlessly pumps data through my overhead telephone over a multitude of channels. Basically ADSL constitues a series of Long and Medium Wave transmitters connected to an antenna of some Kilometers length. I am not alone in doing this, my neighbours and houses further down the road all have their Long and Medium Wave transmitters with nice long antennas blasting away all along my road.
The result? Well, the whole Long wave and most of the Medium Wave spectrum is all but saturated with an ugly loud buzz. I first noticed the problem a couple of years ago with one of my direction finders, the EZ6. Originally I could automatically home in on transmitters located all over France and the UK, but I noticed how suddenly the lower frequency bands got noisier and noisier and the automatic homing no longer worked. At first I thought the receiver was at fault, probably a faulty capacitor but I could not find the fault. Than I discovered that my Lw.E.a had a similar problem, all the lower bands full of ugly buzz! I tried to locate the source in my house, and although some interference could be attributed to my in-house LAN it just never seized. It has become so bad that the whole spectrum under 2 Mhz is complete unusable. I even boldly switched off the power supply to my house, but the buzz persisted.
What conclusively proved the matter was my Kfz 17. Fitted with a Torn.E.b, likewise all it's lower bands are buzzing like mad when parked in my garage. When I drive it around the block while listening to the Torn.E.b I can clearly pick up variations in the buzz when driving under the telephone lines. When I cross under a line, it hurts my ears! When I find a road without overhead telephone lines, the buzz quickly fades and I can actually pick up radio signals again.
So not a lot of joy from my receivers while ADSL is around. All I can hope for is that the glass fibre infrastructure currently under construction in rural France reaches our corner of the world sooner rather than later. And that my neighbours will actually sign up for it....
Does anybody else have these problems and are there any ideas how to deal with it? (answers preferred by pigeon courier)
regards,
Funksammler
As I write this posting on my computer, a digital signal passes to my ADSL modem. This box connects to my telephone line, which -like in most parts of rural France and the UK- runs to the nearest telepohone pole on my road and runs overhead for a couple of kilometers to the nearest telephone node. ADSL, clever and useful as it is, uses the frequency spectrum up to 1.1 Mhz. This bandwidth is split in many channels, each of which is tested by my modem to pick the best after which it relentlessly pumps data through my overhead telephone over a multitude of channels. Basically ADSL constitues a series of Long and Medium Wave transmitters connected to an antenna of some Kilometers length. I am not alone in doing this, my neighbours and houses further down the road all have their Long and Medium Wave transmitters with nice long antennas blasting away all along my road.
The result? Well, the whole Long wave and most of the Medium Wave spectrum is all but saturated with an ugly loud buzz. I first noticed the problem a couple of years ago with one of my direction finders, the EZ6. Originally I could automatically home in on transmitters located all over France and the UK, but I noticed how suddenly the lower frequency bands got noisier and noisier and the automatic homing no longer worked. At first I thought the receiver was at fault, probably a faulty capacitor but I could not find the fault. Than I discovered that my Lw.E.a had a similar problem, all the lower bands full of ugly buzz! I tried to locate the source in my house, and although some interference could be attributed to my in-house LAN it just never seized. It has become so bad that the whole spectrum under 2 Mhz is complete unusable. I even boldly switched off the power supply to my house, but the buzz persisted.
What conclusively proved the matter was my Kfz 17. Fitted with a Torn.E.b, likewise all it's lower bands are buzzing like mad when parked in my garage. When I drive it around the block while listening to the Torn.E.b I can clearly pick up variations in the buzz when driving under the telephone lines. When I cross under a line, it hurts my ears! When I find a road without overhead telephone lines, the buzz quickly fades and I can actually pick up radio signals again.
So not a lot of joy from my receivers while ADSL is around. All I can hope for is that the glass fibre infrastructure currently under construction in rural France reaches our corner of the world sooner rather than later. And that my neighbours will actually sign up for it....
Does anybody else have these problems and are there any ideas how to deal with it? (answers preferred by pigeon courier)
regards,
Funksammler
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