[Ham-News] Amateur Radio Newsline 1284 - March 22 2002

[Tim Miller]

Amateur Radio Newsline 1284 - March 22 2002

The following is a Q-S-T.  Ham radio and the FCC join forced to find a wayward transmitter jamming a fire department radio.  This story is first on Amateur Radio Newsline report number 1284 coming your way right now. (Billboard Cart Here)

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RESCUE RADIO:  HAMS ASSIST IN TRACKING DOWN WAYWARD TRANSMITTER

Ham radio operators teamed up with the FCC to track down a wayward transmitter.  One that was making communications very difficult for the Fallbrook California fire department. It took place the weekend of March 10th.  Amateur Radio Newsline's Norm Seeley, KI7UP, has the rest of the story:

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Milt Davies, KD6UBA, is Division Chief of the North County Fire Protection District.  He was the first to identify the problem as radio frequency interference.

Davis described the annoying signal as being an unmodulated carrier pock-marked with strange data-like bursts. Sometimes the jamming transmitter was on-the-air all the time.  Sometimes it was on and off.  And at still other times the signal almost disappeared  - transmitting only a few seconds in a 10 or 20 minute span.

Davies recognized the problem as on-channel jamming.  He also knew that he needed outside help.  That's when the FCC and the local ham radio community were notified.

First to try was the FCC.  As you know, the agency has a series of permanent direction finding stations on the West Coast.  These can be operated by remote control from Washington, D.C..

The FCC's weekend duty officer attempted to pinpoint the source of the interference using them, but with only partial success.  Some of the locations were down for servicing. The result was a single line-ofbearing.  This meant that the interfering transmitter could be anywhere along a 45 mile path.

To help home-in on the transmitter's location, members of the Palomar Amateur Radio Club were called out.  They were asked to listen to the fire dispatch frequency and give signal strength reports on the unmodulated carrier.  These reports, coupled with the FCC's own line-ofbearing, pointed to the City of Vista, or vicinity.

Now the hunt again became the domain of the FCC.  Bill Zears, the District Director in charge of the FCC's San Diego Field Office, arrived with a sophisticated direction finding vehicle.  Zears drove to Fallbrook for his first good bearing.  That sent him off toward the rugged eastern portion of Vista.

At about the same time, a fire broke out in the Camp Pendleton military complex which borders Fallbrook.  The jamming signal was preventing firefighters working the Pendleton fire from communicating directly with their Dispatch Center.

Zears stayed on the job as Sunday afternoon turned into evening.  Finally, enough direction finding bearings were available to pinpoint the wayward transmitter to a 30' tower atop a hill in east Vista.

The Vista Fire Department was called.  The Battalion Chief on duty offered immediate help.  It turns out that a local ham had brought him up-to-speed on the interference case earlier in the day.

Then another ham recalled that the City of Vista once had a transmitter up on the suspect peak.  That old VHF transmitter dated back to the days before most communications had moved to the 800 MHz band.  He also knew that the old box just happened to be tuned to Fallbrook's current VHF dispatch frequency - because that was Vista Fire's old frequency!

The crew lost no time in getting up the hill and confirming the location of the offending transmitter. Nobody knows why power was still connected.  Probably an oversight by some long forgotten radio installer.  None the less, it caused the Vista's Fire Department to unintentionally jam Fallbrook, but pulling the power plug made the interference go away.

For the Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Norm Seeley, KI7UP.

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Thanks to the cooperation of everyone involved and the tenacity of FCC District Director Bill Zears, the situation had a happy ending.  (W6VR)

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OLYMPICS FOLLOW-UP:  HANDI-HAM CARRIES OLYMPIC FLAME

The 2002 Winter Olympics may be over, but now comes word that a visually impaired ham radio operator was among those who had the honor of carrying the Olympic Torch.

Kitty Hevener, WB8TDA, and her trusty guide dog SunStar, carried the Olympic Flame on Saturday January 19th.  This, as it made its way to Salt Lake City Uath.   Kitty's segment took the flame up to the gates of Fort Point, in the shadow of San Francisco California's Golden Gate Bridge.

According to the Handi Hams, Kitty Hevener, WB8TDA, is active with that group as well.  Handi Hams says that she is a regular volunteer at the annual California Radio Camp held at Camp Joan Mier in Malibu California every March.

You can see photos of WB8TDA carrying the Olympic Torch at www.graystuff.com/gallery/kitty. (HandiHams)

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ECONOMICS:  JAPANS ECONOMIC RECESSION MAY AFFECT RADIO PRICES

The price of ham radio gear and other goods manufactured in Japan may soon change, but its unclear if it will be up or down.  This on word that Japan's economy has fallen into the worst recession in at least two decades. The last time the Japanese economy contracted for three quarters straight was in 1993, when it shrank at around 0.1 percent each quarter. Before that, Japan had never seen even two back-to-back quarters of contraction - the usual definition of a recession - since the government began keeping such records in 1980.  (ARNewsline(tm) from published news reports and ARNewsline(tm)interviews.)

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY:  WSJT TAKING ON THE WORLD

Meantime, a new mode of operation seems to be taking Amateur Radio by storm.  We have reported on it before: WSJT.  And it lets everyone get in on what used to be the esoteric operation called meteor scatter.  QNews Graham Kemp, VK4BB, looks at the way WSJT is taking on the world:

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WSJT is a digital mode, designed specifically for meteor scatter communications. It stands for Weak Signal communications by Joe Taylor K1JT.  Its advantage for is that it sends extremely fast in a standard SSB bandwidth at 147 characters per second or about 1700 words per minute. By virtue of this speed it is possible to send two call signs and a signal report in  a tenth of a second meteor ping.

The equipment to make WSJT contacts is fairly modest.  A two meter SSB  transceiver and a computer -- a Pentium, at least 75 MHz is the main hardware  required. Then you need a simple PSK-31 interface box, as described in March 2000 AR magazine and some WSJT software.

An RF power output of 50 is the practical minimum, with 100 watts providing a worthwhile improvement.  A major advantage with WSJT is the small antenna system required.   A five element Yagi will do as well as a 10 element Yagi.