They'll do it every time!

 I'm sure most of you have seen this old comic. I think I may have even posted it before.

There was a time, when I was still living in East Brunswick with my parents that I encountered a similar situation. For years, I had only a Mor-Gain multi band dipole that I had put up during my Novice days. it was fairly inconspicuous. Sometime in the mid to late 80s I added a GAP Challenger vertical in the backyard. They were pretty new at the time.

I had a neighbor, two houses away who hated that antenna - and I mean HATED it, with a capital H-A-T-E-D! Every single time he saw me come out of the house, he'd start yelling at me that I was messing up his TV. Of course, he had to be the last person in the state of New Jersey without cable, but even so, I knew it was not me. I took a great amount of care in maintaining a clean signal. I had low-pass filters on the back of my radio (That's when I had my Icom IC-730 and I even performed the mod which allowed you to reduce power to as low as 100 milliWatts) and everything was grounded very well. I even offered to purchase hi-pass filters for the back of his TVs and would install them, gratis. Nope, as sure as God made little green apples, there was no way he was going to let me into his house.

My shack was in the converted garage that was my sister's art studio. After she got married, I was told I could move all my radio equipment from the house to there. It was great! I didn't have air conditioning and it got a bit warm in the summer, but a floor fan made it bearable. For the winters, baseboard heating left the space a bit on the chilly side, but comfortable, as long as you wore a sweater or a sweatshirt.

I had a small black and white portable TV (with rabbit ears) in there, and I invited Bob (the angry neighbor) to come watch that TV while I actually transmitted some CW at the same time. He came over and saw that there was nary a ripple, buzz, or rasp on the TV, even at 100 Watts. But of course, that didn't convince him, and probably just ticked him off all the more. His TV problems were all my fault, no doubt about it! In reality, I knew what the problem was. There was another Amateur Radio op who lived directly across the street from him and was actually closer to him than I was. He had a dipole in his attic, and he ran power while most of the time I was running my customary 5 Watts.. He was the one causing Bob's problem. I knew it, but wasn't about to rat out a fellow Ham. The fellow Ham knew it as well, but kept his lips closed tighter than the main vault at Fort Knox. He was fine with it that I was the scapegoat. Nice, huh?

The issue came to a head one day as I pulled into my driveway, in May of 1988. Bob was there as usual, leaning on the fence, both barrels loaded to pepper me with shotgun blasts of complaints before I was even able to enter the house. "You did it again! You messed up my TV so bad that I couldn't watch the Yankee game last night! I'm going to report you to the FCC!"

So I sighed, as I was dog tired, and asked him, quite calmly - "Bob, you said this happened last night? Are you absolutely sure? 100% positive?"

"I always know when you're on that #$&^! radio of yours!" Oh Geez, profanity this time!

So I answered, "Once again, I'm sorry for your interference problem, Bob. But I just drove home from Newark airport. I just spent the past two weeks in Switzerland getting factory training for the company that I work for. There's no way that was caused by me, I was 4,000 miles away, and my flight back just landed about two hours ago."

I rarely heard from him again. But I'm certain that he did the happy dance when I got married and moved to my present QTH ...... and I'm also quite sure that his interference problem continued on for a long time after I exited the scene. That fellow Ham with the tight lips and the dipole hidden in his attic became an SK only a couple of years ago.

In retrospect, I really have to thank cranky ol' Bob. Things always happen for a reason, and it was these incidents which changed me from a part time QRP dabbler into a full time QRP'er. I kind of made a vow to myself that I'd never let myself get into that kind mess again, and if flying under the radar (so to speak) was the way to do it - then so be it.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!