[NLRS] 5.4 Gig RF mystery -- any ideas?

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 10:02 -0500, Todd Sprinkmann wrote:
> 
>    Good morning,
> 
>    I live about 40-45 miles north and a little west of Milwaukee and I
> got a call from my wireless ISP this morning.  They've been getting
> clobbered by full-scale RF that wipes out their 5.4 gig backhauls over
> about a 20 mile radius.  There's a specific pattern to it, that I'll 
> explain.  .
> 
>    They called me because they know I'm a ham and they thought maybe
> this was somehow ham-related.  Once I heard what the pattern was, I
> told them I'm 99.9% sure it's not ham.  Even if it were somehow, I don't
> know of anyone up this way that runs 5 gigs.  And it wouldn't be a 
> steady
> carrier pinning their meters.  So with an unsolved mystery, I thought 
> I'd
> toss it out here and see if anyone has any ideas.
> 
>    The pattern is this:  For the last 2 to 2 1/2 months, every Friday 
> night
> @ 10:30 sharp their signal meters go full-scale and it knocks their
> service off.  Again, this all wireless.  This is farm country out here,
> largely out of the range of DSL and so forth.  So the fellow told me
> that at least 4 spots are affected by this, and again, it's in about a
> 20-mile radius.  We were both very mystified as to what would be
> so strong that it would overwhelm a large area, especially given
> two degree beamwidths with their receiving dishes.  The actual
> geographical area is southern Sheboygan county and northern
> Washington county, if that has any significance.
> 
>    The RF lasts usually about 10 minutes and then it disappears.
> But the guy did say that lately, it's been staying on longer sometimes.
> But it's always Friday night, and it always starts @ 10:30pm.
> 
>    Any thoughts or comments?
> 
>    73,
>    Todd   KC9BQA  EN63ao 
> 
It is a band shared with military and many unlicensed services. More
unlicensed spread spectrum services every day with no coordination of
frequency or spreading function. The military gets priority over all
other users, include us, with the unlicensed spread spectrum users like
your ISP required to accept all interference from licensed users, hams
or military.

You could search the FCC database for the 5.4 GHz band and users in SE
Wisconsin.

It might just be a competing ISP. Perfectly legal too.

73, Jerry, K0CQ