Bleed over

[Dammyankee]

Hey everyone i need a way to keep my radio from bleeding over on my neighbors tv and phone. Thanks

[PRO151]

A Bencher Model YA-1 Low Pass Filter and good grounding will go a long way towards curing your problem.

[King Mudduck]

Put the modulation limiter back in the radio. Do away with the swing kit or mod kit. Have the radio re tuned to do no more than 100% modulation. Don't run such a low key with the amp on or barefoot because a lot of swing will cause over modulation( bleed over ). Turn down the gain on the D 104. Get the antenna up as high as you can but not over 70 feet because then it starts to hurt your performance. Use the best coax you can afford. Ground the hell out of your antenna because poor ground will cause bleed over. Run a ground wire into the house for your radio and amp, poor ground same problems.

Get a big tube box and forget pills because a lot of pills ( unless the box is very well filtered and very few "comp" amps are ) produce their own harmonices and will cause bleed over even if your radio is clean. Stay with an tube amp like a Heathkit, Dentron, Pride, Drake, Yaesu, Amertrons or Henry because these amps were made to be used as ham amps and are very very clean while still doing a lot of power but stay away from tube amps like Varmints, Elkins, H@L's or D@A's because these are nothing but splatter amps.

Just in case your thinking it..... Your right! I really dont know what i'm talking about even though i can do well over 2500 watts on my base but not bother the people that live within 75 feet of my antenna that's only 40 feet up!!

[Black Lightning]

You may or may not have heard the expression "Height makes it right" ... usually that's in the context of TX signal strengh but it also applies to interference.

The Bencher unit above may or may not work - I had that exact model in the late 80s and the results were mixed.

The big thing is to get your antenna as high as you can, and that if you're running a base, you have a suitable base antenna. Make sure everything is grounded, from the radio to the antenna. If your radio has been 'golden screwdrivered', it may be producing spurious signals (harmonics of the fundamental frequency) to which the Bencher filter will help, but that's more of a bandaid than a fix. If you're running power, you may have to tone it down a bit. If all your equipment is good and you're running legal power, then it might be on the receive end. It's a sad fact that companies often build equipment such as TVs and such, that are not shielded properly - they get around that by adding the FCC type 15 label that states "This equipment may not cause harmful interference, and must receive any interference including that which may cause undesired operation". Toroid coils can go a long way to helping in cases of audio interference including that over telephone lines. Wrapping speaker and telephone lines over the toroids by about 6-7 turns can result in a choke that will strip RF from a long run of wire (this RF can be rectified in a speaker or other other electronic device, causing the voice interference). A neighborly thing would be to buy a few of these toroids and give them to your neighbors, instructing them to wind the speaker and phone wires through them a few turns.

If you are coming over their TV and they're running 'rabbit ears', no amount of work you do on your end will eliminate the TVI. In that event, the only thing that can be done is that they use a roof antenna or cable/satellite. The switch to digital in Feb 2009 should go a long way to fixing this.

[North Texas Mudduck]

keep in mind also all amps will just amplify what you put in
trash in trash out
i can run a 24pill box on the bench here at the house and have no complaints other than the local mudduck traffic

also the telephone and tv are not filtered like they should be

like stated above replace limiter no more than 100 % modulation
coax is a factor height of antenna is also a factor
the type of antenna is also a factor

would like to know the spec on your setup radio coax type length and antenna and how high it is

lots of things to look at
are you hooked to their phone line by mistake

also let them know its not all your fault

show them the manual that came with the phone and the tv handbook
show them the part where it says:
this device must accept any and all interference and this device must not cause any interference
but also do you part in resolving the situation.

but give us some idea what your base setup is

[Lost Sheep]

Rat Shack sells the "toroid" or "ferrite chokes" in packs of 2, that were mentioned earlier.

In this case, you should go buy the chokes and offer to install them. It's not hard. Basically all you do is wrap the power/input wire of the affected equipment around the choke and clip it (the choke) shut. If you interfere with speakers, you'll need to wrap the actual speaker wires. IMO, the more wraps the better.

Everything that was mentioned earlier is correct...BUT...before I spent lots of money on raising my antenna and spending tons of money on coax, I would at least TRY a Low Pass Filter. In minor cases, they will usually take care of it.

Again, IMO, cleaning up you radios TX is the BEST thing to do.

Like KING M.D. mentioned...it just blows me away when people run clipped modulation, blastin D-104s and un-grounded equipment....but yet they wonder why their neighbors complain !!

GOOD LUCK with the neighbors!!

[Slim Jim]

Great advice given here. All these things will help your bleedover problem. As with any trouble you may encounter, start with the little things first. There's one thing you have at your fingertips that will help...your mic-gain control. Try a combination of backing the mic gain down a bit and giving the microphone a little more space between it and your mouth until the interference is reduced. I've seen many setups that were simply over-modulated and once the operators backed the gain down a little and got their face out of the microphone, it was fine. Hope this helps, but if not, you've got a whole checklist of things in this thread to try! Good luck with it, my friend...we've all been there.

P.S. Welcome to the forum!

[pipsqueek]

All good tips to follow, especially, ....turn the mic gain down.

The ferrite filters, great idea. Except don't offer to install them yourself. Buy them if you want, hand them to your neighbor with the manufacturers instructions, look over their shoulders and offer advice as they put them on. If you install them yourself and any little thing ever goes wrong with their equipment, they can say you ruined thier new tv or stereo...it's a liability thing.
Pips

[Black Lightning]

All good tips to follow, especially, ....turn the mic gain down.

The ferrite filters, great idea. Except don't offer to install them yourself. Buy them if you want, hand them to your neighbor with the manufacturers instructions, look over their shoulders and offer advice as they put them on. If you install them yourself and any little thing ever goes wrong with their equipment, they can say you ruined thier new tv or stereo...it's a liability thing.
Pips

Exactly why I said to give the toroids to the neighbors and tell them how to install them. Excellent advice.

[Dammyankee]

Great tips everyon e yhanks for your help

[Lost Sheep]

All good tips to follow, especially, ....turn the mic gain down.

The ferrite filters, great idea. Except don't offer to install them yourself. Buy them if you want, hand them to your neighbor with the manufacturers instructions, look over their shoulders and offer advice as they put them on. If you install them yourself and any little thing ever goes wrong with their equipment, they can say you ruined thier new tv or stereo...it's a liability thing.
Pips

Liability???

It's more like RESPONSIBILITY!

If you are a "responsible" radio operator, you will take the initiative to buy the parts it takes to minimize the problem
AND, as I said, OFFER to install them. By doing this, you will show your neighbor that you are willing and ABLE to try and fix the problem at hand.

As long as you are knowledgable enough about the problem and the fix, you should be able to explain to your neighbor, what the parts you purcased are going to do AND what they wont do...like ruin a television.

SURE, you're not gonna make them sign a waiver that keeps you from being responsible for any damages that may occur to their equipment after the parts are installed.....but at least make it known that the installation of the parts cannot harm their equipment.

I promise you, If they dont want you to install the parts, (If they are decent people, they wont expect you to) then they will let you know that its not expected of you to do so.

I dont know? .......Maybe I've read to deep into CB and Ham Radio etiquette literature, but it only seems like the "RESPONSIBLE" thing to do!!

Liability......I DONT THINK SO!!

[Circuit Breaker]

Definitely get a low pass filter and ground your station as best as you can. However, be prepared for that to make no difference on your interference problem because it depends on where the interference is entering the TV and telephone. In fact, the low pass filter will do nothing to stop the telephone interference. And, if your neighbor has cable or a dish, more than likely the low pass filter won't solve the problem. But you should still take the steps mentioned because if the FCC were to get called and they found you had a clean station, they won't take much (if any) action against you.

Now, in addition to the low pass filter and grounding, get yourself some ferrite chokes...but do NOT get the ones from Radio Shack. I highly recommend these:

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I use these in my house and they have worked very well. You'll basically want to wrap any and all cables going to the TV through these chokes as many times as you can and as close to the TV as you can.

For phone interference, I highly recommend these:

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I use one an RF-1 single line modular on our kitchen phone. My antenna is a 32 ft tall HF antenna covering 7.000 MHz to 54.000 MHz and is ground mounted in our backyard because of deed restrictions. It is about 40 feet from our kitchen phone. With 100 watts on any of the amateur bands, I don't bother the phone in the slightest.

If you do all of that, and you're running legal, then the problem is with your neighbor's equipment. Part 15 of the FCC rules state that a device may not cause interference, but must accept interference. And, a lot of manufacturers do very little shielding on their products in an effort to cut down on costs. As an example, we had a JVC (Junk Via China) A/V receiver. When surround sound was on, you could hear my transmissions no matter what kind of filtering I did and how many chokes I put on the speaker leads. We recently bought a new Yamaha A/V receiver...it cost a lot more than our previous one, and has a lot more features, but it must also have better shielding because the problem went away.