A lot of power poles (poles similar to street lights, not the towers we see in the U.S.) are metal, especially in a lot of places in Europe. At some frequency between 2 MHz and 80 MHz, that metal pole is going to be a darn good 1/4 wave vertical !!! Joel -----Original Message----- From: W5JBP@aol.com [mailto:W5JBP@aol.com] Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 5:56 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9728] Trivia From PowerLine World news article. Note that they offer to "lease" the frequencies and offer amateur radio a new frequency. Are these guys for real? How does a power pole radiate? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Soon after the first trials of Digital PowerLine in the UK, some unanticipated problems arose. Certain radio frequencies were suddenly deluged with traffic, making it impossible to transmit on those frequencies. BBC, amateur radio, and the UK’s emergency broadcasting service were affected. The apparent culprits were standard light poles. Then it became clear that by pure chance British light poles were the perfect size and shape to broadcast Digital PowerLine signals. This situation posed problems not just because of the frequencies involved but also because anyone could listen in on the traffic. Nor.Web is addressing the problem by proposing to lease the frequencies involved from their owners and offering amateur radio operators a new frequency. Negotiations on this topic are currently taking place in London. The privacy issue has not been fully addressed at this point, besides suggestions that all sensitive information should be encrypted.