Hey Valmy... (Engineering Question)

[mongers]

Airplane mode would completely cut off the cellular network.

Is this a GSM phone, or do you use SIM cards for 3G/4G in Europe?

Thanks, OK that means airplane mode shouild kill polling etc.

I can use older 2G phone for most of this, though now 3G/4G is the norm for nearly all handsets/sims.

[Valmy]

"over a long period of time"? So it is periodic? Does it occur consistent with anything like time of day? Does it occur every time the power lines cross the tracks or are near transformers?

It doesn't seem to be correlate with time of day.  We don't monitor noise power constantly; but in some of the qualifying train runs the radio supplier did.  We monitor drop packets on the radio system; that is when the data has become so corrupted the radio fails the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and asks for a retransmission.  The areas of packet drops correlate directly with the area of elevated noise power from the qualifying runs; which tells me that the elevated noise floor is still present.  By "Long period of time" I mean that as long as trains are in these areas they continue to drop packages (that is, it's not an impulse or a series of impulses.)  These areas are near transformers or places where the power lines cross the track.  It isn't everywhere the power lines cross the tracks or the trains run near transformers; just in north where there's a greater population density (and more people stealing power.)  In the south of the line (which is mostly range land) we don't see this problem.

Ok so I have thought about it and chatted with my colleagues about this and I think it is related to the illegal tapping going on, probably due to poor grounding. Would the Rusty Bolt Effect be an issue unless they just happened to be tapping right on that particular line? Because I suspect they are tapping into distribution lines not transmission lines unless they have a few transformers handy.

[Savonarola]

Ok so I have thought about it and chatted with my colleagues about this and I think it is related to the illegal tapping going on, probably due to poor grounding. Would the Rusty Bolt Effect be an issue unless they just happened to be tapping right on that particular line? Because I suspect they are tapping into distribution lines not transmission lines unless they have a few transformers handy.

Thanks, Valmy

Distribution lines seem like they'd be too low power unless, maybe, they cut the perfect length and created an antenna for our frequency.  This being Colombia it's possible the transmission towers or the transformers themselves are poorly maintained and poorly grounded.

[Savonarola]

On a totally unrelated topic; did you see this article in The Spectrum:

A Plug-and-Play Microgrid for Rooftop Solar


I think you'll enjoy it since it involves both solar power and Austin.