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Static on AM radio?: Try/explain THIS!

Iamme

Philosopher
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Aug 5, 2003
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I was listening to AM radio this morning in my house. I had it plugged in an outlet near the stove. The radio was staticy. The static sounded like the strobe effect. It sounded like how when you see a fan blade turn in the light, how you sometimes see the individual blades turning slowly...sometimes in reverse. Well, the static made the comparable of this in sound. It was driving me nuts. I figured some neighbor was running something.

Then I went and made eggs on the stove. As I turn on the heat, the static disappeared. I went..."What the hell?!". So then I started playing around with this. I got thinking: Rogue electricity is the CAUSE of static; yet, When *I* turn on electricity, the static goes away! What the....????

So then I made sure I was correct about this. I started turning the burner off and on. When I would turn it off, the static would reappear. On, it would go away. Over and over again. Also, when the burner would come on and go off automatically, by the thermostat, the same effect would happen.(Interesting way to tell when the thermostat comes on, and goes off).

Then, I unplugged the radio from this outlet and plugged it in the living room, 20 feet away. Same thing.

Then, I theorized that the line voltage was dropping everytime my range burner came on. So, I went and got my voltmeter. No such thing. The voltmeter wouldn't even quiver (when plugged in the outlet), when I would turn on and off the stove. It held *perfectly* steady at 110 volts, either way.

Who has an explanation?
 
Skeptoid---You must not have understood. The stove WAS off. FIRST I was listening to the staticy radio. When I turned the stove ON, the static went away...contrary to common wisdom that says one could asume that added electricity would CAUSE static. Without any other electricity running in my house (my house was not the source of the static), I had static. The oven on, fixed it. Re read the post, then comment again, if you can figure something out here.
 
The gods must be displeased that we have mastered fire.
 
Are you sure the stove was off? I don't mean the heating elements. Does it have a clock, or a timer etc? Switch it off completely, at the isolator.
 
Lamme,

Voltage fluctuation and "rogue electricity" (to hell with it! I ain't powerin' nothin!!) has little or nothing to do with static.

AM radio is very succeptable to RF noise and EMI though. "Noisy" things like electric motors cause the static more often than not.

Having said that ... I haven't the foggiest.

Whomp!
 
Cool, I would assume that there is something in the stove that is changed when you turn it on, which is why it might do that and why unplugging the stove would be an important control.

Then find a different out let and try again, see if the stove and the outlet are on the same cirut for the house.
I would also play with the radio around the house to try to discover where the static is the strongest and the like.
the second most likely explanation is that turning on the burner makes a circut that helps to tune the radio for you.

Does this happen with different frequencies?
 
Iamme said:
Skeptoid---You must not have understood. The stove WAS off. FIRST I was listening to the staticy radio. When I turned the stove ON, the static went away...contrary to common wisdom that says one could asume that added electricity would CAUSE static. Without any other electricity running in my house (my house was not the source of the static), I had static. The oven on, fixed it. Re read the post, then comment again, if you can figure something out here.
Click to expand...
I understood perfectly. Perhaps you did not understand my simple question. I asked you what happens, if anything, if you unplug the stove. Being turned off and being disconnected from the circuit are two different things. Now, do you want to try to eliminate possible causes for the static on your radio or do you want to run around in circles playing games with semantics?
 
Skeptoid---I am not being semantical. I don't play those kind of games with people. Really.

No, I did not unplug it. But how on earth would this do anything if no current was....hmmmm...wait a minute...my stove has a built-in clock that is always on. Hmmmm. I'll try this when I go home. But then I have to hope that the static is there. It isn't always there.
 
Try charging up a strobe flash near an AM radio. Hours of entertainment. Kinda like a theramin?
 
Skeptoid---As soon as I got home last night, i shut off the circuit breaker to the stove. I had the same static on the radio...before and after.

By turning electricity (stove) ON is what causes the static to go away. That is what seems so odd. You would think the opposite might happen.
 
Iamme said:
Skeptoid---As soon as I got home last night, i shut off the circuit breaker to the stove. I had the same static on the radio...before and after.

By turning electricity (stove) ON is what causes the static to go away. That is what seems so odd. You would think the opposite might happen.
Click to expand...

Well radio transission is a wierd thing, what you describe sounds to me like you have a very powerful transmitter nearby that is overwhelming a smaller signal, so the burner element could somehow help reception.

Do you live near a 50,000 watt station?
 
Dancing David---I don't know about the signal...but about 8 miles away, by the crow flies, is one of the world's tallest tv towers (at 2000 feet tall)...and strapped to that tower is the transmitter for the radio station I had on.

But be aware that the static I recieve is not continous-continous. It is intermittent-continous. It might be on for 20 minutes straight. Then go away so there is no static at all for 10 minutes. Then it comes on again. The on and off patterns to the static are not in some uniform time periods. It's as if someone in the neighborhood runs some motorized appliance for a while, quits, turns it back on for awhile again, etc.

But why should my 'on' stove burner make it go away? Similarly, I can reduce the static if I grab the antenna. So, I am grounding it. Therefore, it's as if the energized field of the burner is acting like some ground somehow?

You could probably try this experiment yourself at your OWN house, if you are bored and want to experiment with something. AM is always more staticy than FM anyway. All you have to do is turn the tuner dial until you get static. Now, turn on your stove. You too will probably notice no less than a great reduction in the static.
 
Try turning on other heavy power consuming items in your house. Do you have an electric shower? An immersion heater?

Perhaps the noise is coming in on your mains supply, and when you load it up, sone non-linear effect in the meter or fuses improves the filtering.
 
Get a gas stove. Won't solve the mystery -- just eliminate it.
 
Because I am single, and bored......:D .......

Yesterday, I had my AM radio show on, and the static was on it again. I noticed I could also make it go away by touching metal on the mostly plastic radio. Touching the antenna actually made it WORSE, as did touching the top of the radio (plastic). But, when I touched the steel speaker covers, or the metal 'phones' port, the static disappeared.

Hmmmmm. Am I an antenna or a ground? (Or, neither?) I went out to my work van and got one of my voltmeter leads. I plugged it into the grounded house outlet's ground and held it on the speaker, then on the 'phones' port. This did not help.

Why not???? You'd think that the household ground circuit would act both as a ground and a giant antenna. Can ANYBODY explain this?...before I go batty?
 
Touching the antenna does not 'ground' it. It merely supplies more capacitance to the tank circuit (your body's surface area most certainly can act as a capacitor - ever zap yourself on a doorknob?). Same thing on the other end of the circuit. Depending on the polarity of things (and this can change), that extra capacitance is needed either on the input side or the output ('ground') side of the tank (tuning circuit).
The static is possibly coming from something with a thermostat involved - furnace, water heater, fish tank heater (don't laugh). When you turn the stove on, the voltage drop across the entire house may be enough to settle the offending item down.

To me, the key is the intermittent static. I have the same problem. Keep an informal log - times, is the furnace/water heater running, is it raining or windy outside (you'd be surprised how little it takes to make an insecure connection a diode)...things like that. Trust me when I say that this will be a very elusive thing to track down. Noises like this can travel from the electrical system of one house to another on the same electrical drop - as long as you're both on the same side of the same stepdown transformer, you'd be amaaaaaaaaaaazed at the electrical warbles that can travel through the lines to everyone else on the circuit.

I'd like to find mine - drives me bats laying there at night trying to listen to Outer Farblungistan on the Grunding FR200...:(
 
There is a static source somewhere in or near your house. Sounds like ignition, is anybody idling an engine in the neighboorhood?

Your radio, like any radio, has something called AGC (automatic gain control). The signal from different radio stations can differ in strength by several orders of magnitude, and to work properly, a radio must have AGC to compensate. Thus, when you receive a weak signal, it has large gain, when you receive a strong station, it turns down its internal amplification.

OK, now to the set-up: There is this static source, and a station you receive. The signal from the station requires enough amplification to make the static source come through too, so you hear static. Now you change your receiving conditions, so the radio stations comes in with greater signal strength, touching parts of the radio will do this by adding yout body to the antenna area, and, for some reason, switching on your stove (when you flip a switch, the wiring configuration changes, so this can happen).

So, in response to the increased signal, the AGC in your radio lowers the amplification, with the result that the radio can no longer "hear" the static.

Solutions:

- Find the source, I gather it is a portable radio, so walk around and find the greatest strength, or switch various appliances off, one at a time.

- Improve your antenna.

- Use FM.

Hans
 
Iamme said:

But why should my 'on' stove burner make it go away? Similarly, I can reduce the static if I grab the antenna. So, I am grounding it. Therefore, it's as if the energized field of the burner is acting like some ground somehow?
Click to expand...

The burner is an inductor, even if that's not its primary function. Perhaps the overall impedance of your house changes and is acting more antenna-like when you turn it on?

Try it with a battery powered radio to test that possibility.
 
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