HF piracy: has it ever interfered?

[Self Loading Freight]

Not quite sure this is Tech Loggish enough, but...

A friend and I were discussing a group of radio pirates who hang out around 6.6 MHz, which they call the Echo Charlie band. There are usually a handful of people transmitting on there in the evening, in Europe at least.

Every so often, one of these bad boys receives a visit from enthusiastic listeners in blue uniforms who encourage him to trade in his equipment for a suspended sentence and a few quid costs. The resultant press release never fails to mention that such piractical actions 'interfere with critical aircraft communications' or somesuch.

Has this ever happened? There are a few aeronautical HF channels in the EC band, but I've never heard it even rumoured. Though it might make a change from doing the Telegraph crossword.

R

[OzExpat]

One of the prime frequencies here is 6622. It is used extensively and is subject to interference on a daily basis by non-aviation users. Sometimes the interference is minor, but at other times it can be significant enough to require pilots to find another frequency, or simply attempt to overtransmit them.

Suspicion centres on fishing boats belonging to a neighbouring country whose people do not speak English as a first language.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

I'm a licenced radio amateur (G4DYO) and I know that in the past such offenders have been dealt with, but I also know that the level of "policing" of the radio spectrum in the UK is considerably lower than it was 20-30 years ago. When I first obtained my licence the Post Office Radio Engineers would frequently inspect my station - on a "surprise" basis to ensure that all was well. Such inspections ceased many years ago. It was the same department which sought out and prosecuted radio spectrum abusers but I'm not sure how often this occurs nowadays, or even if the department still exists.

[BEagle]

I've only once encountered piracy on Aeronautical HF. On the way south to the Malvinas in the mid-80s some hispanic accented voice kept trying to interrupt routine position reports.

The 6 MHz band was full of pirates when I was a student in London in the early 70s; I occasionally used to listen to them on a SW receiver but didn't see what they got out of it as in those days a heavy fine and equipment confiscation were highly likely for unlicensed operators.

Someone using an illegal Band II FM baby alarm kept jamming my FM reception once; I rang the Radicomms Agency but they weren't interested. Once upon a time the Post Office Radio Engineers would have been round like a dose of salts......

CB could have been very good in the UK, but was introduced very poorly with no requirement for official call-signs and equipment which was both unique to the UK and was restricted by inefficient antenna restrictions. Unfortunately CB was ruined by kids playing music on it and generally abusing it; I've no idea what it's like now but there are now 80 channels, the antenna restrictions have been relaxed and it should be a useful and very cheap comms system - particularly since kids now use mobile phones, play computer games etc and probably don't cause the problems they used to in the early 80s.

[Dan Winterland]

Better frequency stabilization requiring smaller band widths has improved matters somewhat.

[BEagle]

A little research reveals that the 'Echo Charlie' pirates use LSB rather than USB. Thus interference should be less - although there would still be some artifacts and garbling which would cause poor reception.

The 6 MHz pirates in London used AM; that was far, far worse.

One of the plus points of NFM CB was its interference immunity; the illegal (in UK) AM system was far more intereference prone and the use of linear amplifiers to drown out other transmissions posed serious risk of interference to lawful services. Early Tornado operators at Cottesmore were concerned that truckers on the A1 'wearing boots' (using linears) could cause UCMs to be induced in a/c on the approach over the road....

[rotornut]

the level of "policing" of the radio spectrum in the UK is considerably lower than it was 20-30 years ago
In Canada I am told there is no policing - at least on the higher frequencies. On the low bands I haven't heard of any enforcement actions against violators. In the US I understand there is a more active policy on the part of the FCC.

[Self Loading Freight]

People do still get nabbed, although it's rare. The latest stats I can find are 2002/2003 on the Ofcom web site (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/codes_guidelines/radio_comms/enforcement/ProsecutionStatistics/prosecution_stats?a=87101) , which show two prosecutions for '6.6 MHz'. The rest of the figures are interesting - amateurs behaved impeccably throughout the period, which those who know the species will attest is only to be expected.

Ahem.

R

[rotornut]

SLF,
Ofcom site is interesting. I couldn't find anything like it for the FCC
or Industry Canada (which manages the electromagnetic spectrum).
A friend of mine at IC tells me that there is virtually no enforcement here any more but there are monitoring stations so who knows...

[Self Loading Freight]

The Radiocommunications Agency (OK, Ofcom) is rolling out quite a lot of remote spectrum monitoring and DF'ing, although it doesn't say too much about it. There's a bit here. (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/ra/about/document/annual/02_03/objective14.htm)

However, I understand that the agency (oko) has certain, er, issues when it comes to monitoring some of that funky new 5GHz WLAN stuff - ie, it can't, because none of its bits go that far up.

R