The story of Amateur Radio operators organising in order to clear their frequencies of the Soviet 'Woodpecker' (OTH RADAR System) always makes me smile: https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html
That'd cost a lot of hams their operating licences...
Though there is precedent for it -- from back in the days of the "Russian woodpecker", an OTH RADAR system. Some used to key up and play various sounds at it...
> A lot of Hams enjoy tracking down hidden transmitters, we even set up "games" to practice doing just that, we call it a "Hare & Hound" practice.
Hams really seem to enjoy being snitches!
I'll keep playing with my Baofangs and their aftermarket antennas! Also I'll wait until HAM dies out as a old white men hobby, and the frequency band are repurposed to a better use that allows anonymity and encryption - or I'll stay on public solutions like WIFI/LoraWAN!
If this is such a high concern, why don't they go on a fox hunt? HAM is pretty popular in rural areas and HAMs love fox hunts. With the frequency and length that these things are up, they should be able to close in on the operators fairly quickly.
> there are hams that do hidden transmitter hunts purely for sport. A posse of them could find that clown easily on any random Saturday morning and not be late for lunch.
My dad's a Ham and I used to go to hamfests with him. One time someone jammed the talk-in frequency for the hamfest. I was never sure if that was more like waving a red flag in front of a bull or throwing down a gauntlet, but the talk-in quickly switched to a different frequency and the jammer was caught.
Q: "And if you were not licensed how would they even identify you or track you down?"
A: Ham radio uses a frequency band plan that everyone agrees to adhere to, so if someone shows up on those frequencies who doesn't belong, we will notice.
Hams are also required to broadcast their FCC allocated "call sign" about every 10 minutes, or when starting and ending a transmission, if you're not doing that, then licensed Hams will notice.
If you think you're being "clever" and make up a fake call-sign, we will notice, we know who the regulars on the Ham frequencies are in our geographic areas.
If you're producing "harmful interference", i.e. illegally broadcasting on a licensed Amateur Radio Band, then some of "us" Hams will get together and Track your signal, via triangulation, and eventually we Will find your transmitting location.
Then we notify the FCC, and eventually... they will contact you, and you Will stop, or face legal consequences.
A lot of Hams enjoy tracking down hidden transmitters, we even set up "games" to practice doing just that, we call it a "Hare & Hound" practice.
I'm quite good at tracking down harmful interference on the VHF Ham bands.
Ham radio has a lot of places to explore, but do avoid the H/F bands, it's full of "rag chewers", and you'll want to poke out your eardrums if you listen to them.
I’d imagine the ham radio version of this would be about trying to track down hordes of unlicensed operators who got a new Baofeng for Christmas and are now plaguing the local repeater?
Yep. Amateur radio operators couldn't care less about a pirate FM station, but will fiercely defend their own bands.
Our local ham community once got a foreign country to move their over-horizon radar off the ham bands by escalating it with the authorities until they raised a formal diplomatic complaint. Lol.
And rightfully so - ham bands are under constant threat of getting reclassified and auctioned off to the highest bidder. It's use it or lose it.
I know ham clubs that hide a transmitter in an undisclosed location in the woods, and they race cars for who can find it fastest (by triangulation). It's basically rally for geeks, with lots of unknowns.
Isn't this technically possible by anyone? My understanding from what little I've read on HAM radios is these are frequencies that are just set aside for police, people can technically broadcast to them, it's just the FCC will hunt you down. Nothing overtly special, though I presume regular radios try to block out those frequencies.
Any true HAMs care to chime in? I'm more amateur than amateur radio.
That depends entirely on what they are listening with. One sub set of ham radio is called fox hunting which is a gameified form of radio direction finding. Some guys are really good at it. If you annoy one of them and they are persistent they can potentially track you down. The Feds of course have very sophisticated tools far and above what's available to you but if you've drawn that kind of attention you are already in deep trouble and looking at jail time. Powerful software defined radios like the RTL-SDR are inexpensive and with a PC can be used to scan broad swathes of spectrum and even decode and store transmissions. People can setup their own DIY listening posts this way. For someone with the right setup and looking at the right time they would notice you are using an encrypted transmission. To figure out where you are would involve repeated detections from multiple points. An adjacent topic is pirate radio stations. The Youtube channel Ringway Manchester has a series of videos about historical UK pirate stations and their stories. You might find it interesting.
reply