Does anyone on/near radio point experience any type of interference as a result of the presence of the towers? I heard someone mention this, and it reminded me of my boyfriends 2000 Honda Accord whose car alarm randomly goes off for NO reason. It doesn’t happen constantly, but it might happen a few times a week. We live on 12th near Pike/Pine. Also, sometimes he gets weird radio-type feedback through his guitar amp.
I am the furthest from a rocket scientist, so I don’t know if this is caused by the towers, or if there is a way to make it stop. I was just wondering if anyone else around the Hill experiences anything like this.
A few times that I parked near the towers – around Madison and 17th (along 17th) the remote to lock and unlock my car doors wouldn’t work. Happened every time I parked around there and it is the only place that it has ever happened in 10 years of owning the car.
I actually had to use my key (!) to lock/unlock the car doors.
my boyfriend also has trouble setting and unsetting the alarm with his fancy keychain device when he is parked near our place. I also can’t get ANY clear radio stations at my house. oh darn.
every single pair of speakers in our home, and sometimes our TV, emits some weird frequency from the radio. it’s usually a religious station (maybe something from the AM side of the dial). Regardless, nothing we have done makes the sound go away. cheap speakers, expensive speakers, tin foil, surge protectors, nothing really helps. I’ve tried shortening the speaker wire and it helps a little bit, but not by much. we live on 15th an Pine. oh well. i’m not moving.
Radio interference on speakers is fairly common, and can happen even when you’re not right next to towers.
You can get ferrite beads to put on your speaker wires. They suppress radio interference, and are pretty cheap online or from Radioshack. Can’t guarantee they’ll work. Don’t know about the car alarm – maybe ask your dealer if they can do anything?
I used to live at 17th and Spring, and we’d get radio station interference 24/7. We used to radio stations on top of other radio stations. The signal was so strong right there our tuner would just pass it along.
Capitol Hill is RFI hell. Problems with remote locking systems on cars (I have to be within a yard of the received on the car at home, but I can open it from up to 30 feet away elsewhere). Problems with some bands of cordless phones (we shifted to another band to avoid).
Then there are the problems with too strong a signal that others have already mentioned for TV and Radio. By the way, if you haven’t prepared for the cutover of Analog to Digital Over-the-Air (OTA) television broadcasting, now would be a good time to check what digital signals you can receive and figure out what kind of antenna you will need. Hmmm, I feel a separate post coming on…
I get KOMO 1000 on everything in my house. Sometimes I think I hear the coffeemaker announcing Mariners games. Strange because KOMO’s AM towers are on Vashon. It’s especially bad on older stereo equipment without polarized plugs. In that case, trial and error getting everything plugged in the same direction and grounded correctly helps a lot. Also don’t coil any extra-long cables you have connected to your equipment, as coils of wire make great AM antennas. You can also try shortening or lengthening speaker wire and patch cable lengths, or go with shielded or twisted pair cables, though that won’t help if it’s the actual device that’s picking up the interference. Be sure to ground the shielding, even if the rest of the system is grounded.
Lastly, you can purchase a Radio Interference Damper, though these are highly specific to the frequency causing the interference, and you may need to place several at different points in the circuit.
I think Radio Point is mostly FM towers, including KEXP. If you’re curious, you can dig through http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city to find out.
Fortunately, FM interference isn’t an issue in my building, so I haven’t done any research. Guess that means I rambled endlessly without really answering your question.
So yes, I agree, radio interference is frustrating!
I live about 3 blocks from the towers. Don’t have any problems with interference in my radio, TV, or stereo speakers. I don’t have a car remote so I can’t speak to that.
The radio hums pretty badly (especially if in direct line of site of the towers), and often there are load beeps and interruptions during the cordless phone calls (neither of which happened before moving a few blocks away from the towers). But…
We do get more than a dozen digital OTA channels on a very small telescoping antenna.
I live within sight of the towers and haven’t noticed anything.
about 50% of the texts I try to send don’t go through the first time. I’m at 17th and Union, and thats all I’ve noticed.
Oh, and this strange growth on my neck.
I live right across the street from the towers and the keyless entry to my car doesn’t work on much of Capitol Hill except for the basement parking at Safeway on 23rd and Madison.
Or my whole business plan will be screwed!
they’re government left brain wave amplifiers.
I’m 1/2 a block away on 18th and I have zero issues with interference (honestly).
I wonder why the big variance… perhaps I’m TOO close (radio waves flying over my head)???
All speakers in my house, from an expensive ipod dock to a cheapie computer speaker set get radio interference. I live a couple blocks away on 17th & Howell, and it’s quite frustrating.
My husband and I were touring the new built green homes over on 19th and Pine last weekend and he raised a good question. Do any of you who live near there have problems with wireless internet in your homes?
and the most interesting part is that there seems to be no direct relation between how close you live to the towers and whether you experience the interference.
… but there was a dear science about this in the stranger a while back.
I live about a block away from the towers. Sometimes, when I use my landline phone (which isn’t often), I can faintly hear other radio-type voices. Also, my TV reception isn’t great and I can’t get Fox for crap. Of course, I could solve that by not being such a Luddite and actually paying to get cable…
I lived on 16th and Howell 2004-2006 and had Comcast over all the time to fix my broken internet connection which was not even on wifi at that point. After about 10 visits, a tech took my pasta pot and put the modem in there.. tacky, but all of a sudden my internet worked great. He blamed the radio towers for all the issues. I was worried when I moved back to the area it would be an issue again, but I’m now at 15th and Howell with wifi and zero issues. I think Comcast has made some major upgrades in the recent year, so Bubbles – I wouldnt worry about wifi connections now.
I live near the other side of Madison Valley with a view of the towers. I bought a cheap radio a few years ago that gets wildly bad reception depending on where it is in the house. In the rooms with windows facing the towers all the stations bleed together and it’s unusable. It’s especially bad on the second floor and buzzes. In the room away from the windows the reception is perfect.