Here in Nova Scotia we get a lot of wind. So much so, that sometimes the wind gets the better of our local power utility. Trees fall over and that takes down the power lines.

For most people, when the lights go out, there’s not much to do other than to curl up with a good book and try to keep warm. For radio enthusiasts, a power failure is a pristine new playground sans QRM! I’ll explain.

Most of the time, legitimate high frequency signals have to compete with less-than-intentional electronic noise from FCC-unapproved wall-wart transformers, LED lighting, plasma TVs, and power line hash, to name a few. It’s a mess for the ears. But when the lights go out, my neighbours no longer trespass on my high-frequency peace of mind.

So when the power service dropped off in my Halifax neighbourhood, I grumbled—but I then realized I had a tremendous opportunity: I pulled out my McHF QRP transceiver to listen and record the high frequency bands. I could quickly tell that my reception had improved. It was as if I had moved way out into the country, far from “noisy neighbours.” I turned on an audio recorder because I was most interested in that instant when the power returns. Although it was plain that my reception was better, I wanted to hear how much of a difference there was in background noise levels.

The radio was tuned to CHU, the Ottawa-based time signal station, broadcasting at 7.850 mHz. At 22:03, almost three hours into the power interruption, the power returned, as did the rf noise:

This unwanted noise is so strong that I’ll be soon starting work on a noise cancelling unit that does for RF what Bose noise cancelling headphones do for audio noise. Stay tuned.