[PPRAANet] Miscreants on the PPFMA 146.970 or 448450 repeater

[John Bloodgood]

All,

I have been seeing reports all morning about possible illegal operators on the PPFMA repeaters.

If you hear them, DO NOT engage them and we really should not acknowledge them in any way. If you are having a conversation, just increase your power and talk over them. They will get bored and go away. We have seen this multiple times over the years.

If you can copy them on the input side of the repeater, note their relative signal strength, time, and your location. You can send that info to me.  I will assume you have a 2 dB gain vertical unless you tell me otherwise.  If you can do some direction finding, that is great.  Remember, the beam on a yagi can be pretty wide, so you may have to give a range of degrees for the peak signal strength.  Another thing you can do is use a horizontal dipole and shoot the nulls in the signal strength. In the case of the dipole, the nulls are when the length of the dipole is pointed towards the transmitter, so that is the direction you want to record.  If you happen to have a Doppler system, that is great, especially if you can transport it to a few different locations.  Again, send me the info and I will compile it and see if we can narrow down where they are. Keep in mind there may be more than one person in different locations.

Since I own the Broadcastify feeds, I have full access to the archives and will download them for the FCC.

I will listen to the archives tonight if I have time and make sure it isn't someone having problems with their rig. We know some stations closer to the mountains are in a bit of a shadow, but we know many of their voices.  Also, we have had problems in the past with people setting up cross-band repeaters to access the PPFMA repeaters and that has caused serious kerchunking issues, so we want to make sure that isn't the problem.

If you want to get the FCC's attention, you can file your own complaint at https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/guides/interference-complaints  .  You can tell them that the people are interfering with ARES nets and normal operator conversations.

Thanks,







John Bloodgood, KD0SFY
Emergency Coordinator & Public Information Officer
Region 2 District 2, Colorado ARES (Pikes Peak ARES)
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