"Jack Painter" wrote in message
news:h0cVd.37530$%U2.35335@lakeread01...

wrote
About 15 years ago we hasd a nasty ice storm.
Knocked out the AC mains, telephone, and cable TV for 3 days.
I was amazed at how quite it got.
I was operating from a couple of GellCells, kept charged off
by a a small PV (solar cell) array.
Other then freezing my but off, it was great fun.
Since I normally only go on camping/mine DX-epditions in the
late summer and early fall, it was much wquiter at home then
I had ever exeprienced in the deep woods.
I could hear the igniton noise from the highway about 1 mile
away!
I had very mixed feelings when they brought our power back on.
I was tired of the cold, but reslly enjoyed the quite.
I have done all that I can to reduce the RFI that I produce.
I have bypassed all the AC mains outlets, bypassed teh AC mains
where it enteres the breaker box, used lots of RFI suppresion
ferrite "beads" on all the active electronics, imporved my ground
system as much as I can, and use the best (lowest noise) antenna
that I can currently afford. Since I had a glimsp of what true
radio
quite conditions were, I had the incentive to do what I could.
It made a big difference. But, alas it is a far cry from the quite
I had for a few days. Given the omnipresent man made electrical
noise
around most American cities, I suspect that very few of us get to
see
just how sensitive our receivers really are.
Terry

Roger that, in Virginia Beach every couple years or so we get a
summer
week-off from the grid after a hurricane blows by. The reception is
phenomenal. I wonder what it would be like in the winter?

I've never had that scenario happen for very long;
usually for me the power goes out for a while during
a thunderstorm, but I'm not inclined to fry my
electronics and hook up the big antenna at that
time. The two biggest changes I had to clean up
noise we move to a house where the electrical
and phone lines are underground, and to take the
Sat 800 off of the same breaker used by the Dell
laptop for work and put it on a separate one. In the
case of the Dell, noise coming through the AC/DC
transformer was absolutely horrible; my trusty home
computer never had that issue.

--Mike L.