You want techs knocking on your door and working in neighborhoods all
night long? Working at night with no lights....They would have to set
up portable lights to work. Who would that bother? That would go over
well. Working at night is far more dangerous. I am not a huge Xfinity
fan but it is my only option and the do give refunds. Obviously you had
a bad experience. I could say the same about most any huge provider
like Verizon, AT&T, Century Link.
Maybe this was a satire piece and I missed it.
W0MU
On 6/25/2026 5:34 PM, Pat Whelton via Topband wrote:
You don't want to hear all the stories I have about Xfinity. They have got to
be the sorriest outfit going. They are constantly working issues during the
daytime. Annually they raise your invoice by $20 and claim they are only
passing along fees. Oh, and no refunds for all the interrupted service.
I have an idea. Why not have your technicians work between Midnight and 6:00
AM. Then you wouldn't bother anyone. Oh, no, can't do that. That makes too
much sense. Plus the techs are probably Union and you would have to pay them
quadruple time and a half.
Pat - KZ5J
-----Original Message-----
From: Topband <[email protected]> On Behalf
Of Bill Lederer via Topband
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2026 5:10 PM
To: Rob Atkinson <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Topband: 5KW amp squibble
What you say here is true:
"Almost no one gets OTA TV. "
But I did have a very odd experience with Xfinity when I was running FT-8 on 17
meters. Two guys came to the door and told me they were from Xfinity and were
trying to troubleshoot a problem they were having with 18 mhz. I said, yes, I
happen to be transmitting. Let me run it, and I'll bring my
kx2 with no antenna down to see if it correlates with their display that was
showing interference. I asked them how they found me and they noted that they
looked up hams in the village, likely on the FCC site and I was the only one
with antennas. (Admittedly only dipoles)
Normally this is a not-fun story, but they knew it was their problem and wanted
to track it down. It was kind of a reverse foxhunt for them--trying to find
the point of ingress of the signal. Apparently that frequency is on one of
their channels over the cable.
They came back three or four times, solving one problem or another in their
network. They finally fixed it. Or at least I think they did, as I haven't
spent any time since then on FT8, and very little on that band.
Usually these stories are full of accusations, but they up front admitted that
it was their leak that led to service degradation in the neighborhood.
And that is the only TVI (actually CATVI) since the 60s when TVs were pretty
sensitive, and it was only in our house.
w8lvn
On Thu, Jun 25, 2026 at 6:38 AM Rob Atkinson via Topband <
[email protected]> wrote:
every piece of consumer equipment in your home and the homes of your
neighbors would be turning flips when you transmitted,
That's not really as big of a problem now compared to 10 or 20 years
ago. Almost no one gets OTA TV. Most people are on cell phones, or
VOIP via shielded cable. People don't listen to music with stereos
and speakers now except for old farts like me. Most people use ear
buds and spotify. They watch TV streams over internet. Since almost
everything now is digital, fiber optic, bluetooth, wifi, you can run
QRO on medium wave and HF and not worry about a torch carrying mob at
your door. It's really a good time to be a ham as far as that's
concerned.
73
Rob
K5UJ
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