Thank you.  QST has talked a good deal about the fact that power companies in 
some areas were trying to put broadband wireless internet out over power lines. 
 It didn't work very well and radiated enough to be a major nuisance.  Either 
they quit on their own or the FCC made them stop, I forget which.  This sounds 
similar.  I'm ab1jx by the way.  You should be able to see that with sdr sharp.

I don't know whether it depends on frequency or not, but I can scan the AM 
aircraft frequencies around 120 MHz and I don't have the same problem.

#!/bin/sh
rtl_fm -M -S -l 132 -p 102 -f 123000000 -f 135675000 -f 123750000 -f 122700000 \
-f 125350000 -f 133600000 -f 118350000 -f 134850000 -f 119600000 -f 122950000 \
-f 121500000 -f 126450000 -f 121600000 -f 127800000 -f 126450000 -f 122800000 \
-f 135675000 -f 135875000 -f 119025000 /tmp/`date +"air_%Y-%m-%d_%H%M.raw"`

That doesn't pick up anything odd, just pilots talking.  The other is 
Massachusetts state police around 850 MHz nbfm.  I tried taking each frequency 
out of the pool one at a time, raising the squelch level (it's an int by the 
way).  

I have a couple of pigtails that fit my dongles, so I put a 50 ohm terminator 
in place of the antenna and I still hear it, even here in a basement.  It could 
be something from a computer, but it isn't on any one particular frequency.

I was thinking it was some artifact of the demodulation method used.  If that 
were the case other people would hear it too when they scan.  It isn't a local 
noise I don't think.

  Alan
-----

Radio Astronomy - the ultimate DX

--- On Sun, 4/28/13, Ron Hayes <[email protected]> wrote:

From: Ron Hayes <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Scanning with rtl_fm
To: "Alan Corey" <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" 
<[email protected]>
Date: Sunday, April 28, 2013, 3:01 PM

Last year our power company changed the meter so they can read it from there 
office and it seems to be in the VHF area, I havent pin pointed if its a fact 
yet But I am now getting a large burst I didnt have before.
        From: Alan Corey <[email protected]>
 To: [email protected] 

 Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2013 10:43 AM
 Subject: Scanning with rtl_fm
   I'm using rtl_fm in a scanning (nbfm) situation, and even with the antenna 
input disconnected and terminated, I get a burst of noise that sounds like a 
squelch tail maybe once each scan cycle.  They're a little over 1 second apart. 
 I've tried setting the squelch up to 10000 where I don't get signals anymore, 
but I still get the noise.

I discovered that if you scan and have the output be a raw audio file, nothing 
gets recorded when nothing breaks squelch.  This makes time-lapse recordings 
where all the pauses are taken out.  Very nice,
 except for the noise bursts.

I'm using:
#!/bin/sh
rtl_fm -N -S -l 132 -p 102 -f 854040000 -f 854240000 -f 854315000 -f 854415000 
-f \
854490000 -f 854540000 -f 855165000 -f 855240000 -f 858790000 -f 867350000 \
-f 867715000 /tmp/`date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M.raw"`

and recorded
 overnight, but I mostly got noise bursts.

  Alan
-----

Radio Astronomy - the ultimate DX    

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