bicker

Piggie

Its very possible. They go into oscillation from overload or a defect. The antenna on them is UHF which is close enough to cell band to be somewhat effective.

Then it would only have to radiate a few milliwatts close to a tower to be the same power level as a cell phone near a tower.

If all that is too techie, yes it's possible and probably not the only case of such occurring.

Probably in the device there was a warning that if it interfered with any licensed device it had to be turned off or moved.

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Back in the day, as I am not sure now but doubt it changed, she now has to write the FCC back to inform them of what she did with the device causing the interference.

I am sure it left her dumbfounded if not lost when she received the citation. I would have understood it, but just some person would have been totally confused maybe even thinking it was fake or a sales scheme.

Legally is she tossed it aside (all I know is the old days) she could be brought up on charges and fined.

Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but when it gets that technical how many out there really know.

I can only hope they also tried to contact her.

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Another angle to this is how we just turn over everything to government. One reason is it's now procedure written by the law staff that is paid anyway.

For what they paid in time to file this, they could have replaced her antenna, which how we used to do things. Even when a neighbor said my ham gear was interfering with them I would show them it didn't bother my TV and I could add filters or clean up their system to correct the problem, mostly caused by corroded connections acting as dielectrics not conductors creating the harmonics causing their own interference in their own systems.

Or back in the my broadcast and two-way days, we would find a spur on a spectrum analyzer, make sure we were not the one causing it with our own equipment, then contact the owner and even help them if they didn't have the gear to fix it.

Or what about a transmitter that is clean. But there is a fence near the antenna with lots of corroded connections between sections which is not uncommon for a fence. The sections of fence receive the signal and try to pass it between them, through a corroded connection. Harmonics result in that process, that could cause interference to another service.

Then the transmitter is clean, the receiver is clean, but not the fence. Who has to fix the fence? Much less how hard it is to find it's the fence.

The problem is if everything in any situation turns into a legal problem, only those with lawyers end up being able to carry on with things.

I have over analyzed this and to me it was plain over reaction on the FCCs part. Sure it followed rules, procedures, legal precedent, etc etc.. which to me shows its a sure sign as a society we are over the edge (my opinion).

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.

rando01

wow.....thats pretty amazing. Big brother is indeed watching...

Piggie

Never heard how they do it there actually.

Edit: We were seriously pondering in the Orlando OTA thread at AVS, when WSBS received a construction permit to increase power on Ch3 to 45KW. That is huge digital considering the analog max was 100KW. It's something like running a few hundred KW analog.

We speculated.

1) Many fish had applied for and used their CECB coupons unbeknown to most humans.
2) They were trying to hit Cuba. Their application flew through the FCC, leading speculation that if nothing else they would throw digital snow on Cuba's Channel 3 stations.

3) They could with nothing near them (more serious)
4) It would give the Dry Torugas a station (more serious).

Granted, their tower is only 51 meters, so it would be all brute force coverage.

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.

Piggie

You are thinking of switching power supplies. Here in the states they rectify the AC from the wall in say a computer or monitor. Then the DC is used in what for all practical purposes is a tiny transmitter, actually oscillator circuit to produce AC with a much higher frequency. This allows they to use a simple toroid for a transformer instead pounds of copper wire and iron core needed at 60 Hz.

All oscillator circuits produce harmonics, and the order of which is determined by the type of oscillator circuit. These are not desirable to the switching power supply itself as may or may not pass through the toroidal transformer. Most of them are filtered by the transformer leaving the fundamental in the low kilohertz range where RF is not regulated. The remainder is hopefully blocked by the metal cage, and other toroids used inside the cage on wires leaving the enclosure.

But one often finds smaller load devices like monitors using a small switching power supply for low voltage DC that is not shielded or not very well shielded, hence why you see the problem more in smaller lower wattage devices using switchers.


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Now other type of power supplies that that are linear put off almost no harmonics and they are very low in frequency, being multiples of 60 Hz. It is possible at the 60Hz hits the rectifying diodes in a silicon diode linear power supply harmonics of 60 Hz are produced. But considering the next device in line is a large capacitor, unfriendly to any AC, they are all but removed.

You can hear them if you put an AM Radio next to a linear power supply but then with it's own front end is probably adding to the harmonics itself.

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Voltage dropping power supplies will 100% put off zero harmonics since it's all DC which is 0 Hz, and all harmonics of DC would also be 0 Hz, since 0 times anything is still 0.

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That said most all circuits that conduct AC and pass through any dielectric junction form harmonics.

Your stereo makes them, any radio including receivers, as this lady found from simply a TV amp.

__________________
The more I understand, the less I know.