A while back in April (Go read the post for noise info), I posted saying that I started the process of issuing a noise complaint with Ofcom. After filling in the forms on their website it took about 3 weeks to get a reply from Ian (Senior Field Engineer), who advised me another chap called Pete would be dealing the complaint and this is where it started!

After returning from the Isle of Arran (Friday on the week I returned in fact), Pete came out with a van full of toys ready to check my station over to make sure I wasn’t causing the S9 of hash on every band from 80m to 2m. Which I knew we wasn’t and he said he appreciated the video files and Google Map of pins where I thought the noise might be coming from.

With all that data he set off with his spectrum analyser and headed off towards the college on the other side of the river, soon to return later saying he found the source which was a faulty thermostat. This is when the fun and games started, weeks passed and on a weeky basis I’d drop Ofcom an email with an update saying nothing had happen and they’d call me confirming similar and this went on for weeks.

But then I got a call from them confirming they’ve decided to ramp up the pressure and they expected something to happen soon, not that convinced I left to go see family during the second week of August to return to a quiet radio spectrum at first I thought it couldn’t be true but it was and the noise level without any preamps is ZERO and with PREAMP 1 in on the FT-950 it flutters between zero and S-1.

This fix was soon confirmed by a call from Ofcom who advised me that they’d been told that work had been carried out to sort the problem and I was able to say it seemed to have happened this time.

I’m really pleased that Ofcom are still interested in protecting the “radio amateur”, and this took them 4 months of pestering and to get a final good outcome. Just hope the bands stay quiet.