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Re: VHO lights & TV
In a message dated 1/19/2001 00:53:47 Pacific Standard Time,
Aquatic-Plants-Owner at actwin_com writes:
> If you try K9AUB's suggestions and are still having problems I have a few
> other things to try. Sounds like K9AUB has had to do some TVI diagnostics
> before (greetings from 8-land, BTW :-)
Yes. Been a ham radio operator for 46 years. I also owned a large TV sales
& service business for many years, and in the late 1960s worked as a Field
Engineer for a major television manufacturer, resolving problems exactly like
this.
> You can try putting aluminum window screen around the ballast (be SURE it
> doesn't short out any terminals or wires though), and then connect it to
> the ground (green) wire in a 3-wire power cord. If you have a 2-wire cord
> now, you can get a 3-wire cord from just about any hardware store.
I wasn't going to suggest this solution because of the aesthetics issues and
the work involved, and also because you really need to enclose the circuitry
inside the screen and then filter the leads coming to and from the enclosure
with coaxial capacitors, lest the wires themselves become antennae to
transmit the interference. It starts to get a little complicated when you
start going that far, but of course that will absolutely resolve the problem.
By the way, copper screen wire works a little better than aluminum because
you can solder the seams of copper screen wire and attain more effective RF
shielding. One last brute force method of solving the problem is to mount
the ballast inside an aluminum chassis box, run the electric lines through
feed-through coaxial capacitors, and electrically ground the chassis box.
Such a solution would probably end up costing around $30-$50 for the required
components. It's a bit of work, but it WILL completely eliminate any and all
traces of interference. If television interference is severe, it might be
worth going to the trouble. But this is really Ice Cap's problem, and Ice
Cap should be forced to fix it. They have a legal obligation to do so.