Cuba Interfering with Amateur Radio Transmissions
takyon writes:
Cuba Jamming Ham Radio? Listen For Yourself
As anti-government protests spilled onto the streets in Cuba on July 11, something strange was happening on the airwaves. Amateur radio operators in the United States found that suddenly parts of the popular 40-meter band were being swamped with grating signals. Florida operators reported the signals were loudest there, enough to make communication with hams in Cuba impossible. Other operators in South America, Africa, and Europe also reported hearing the signal, and triangulation software that anyone with a web browser can try placed the source of the signals as emanating from Cuba.
Cuba has a long history of interfering with broadcast signals, with several commercial radio stations in Florida allowed to operate at higher than normal power levels to combat jamming. But these new mystery signals appeared to be intentionally targeting amateur radio transmissions. A few hours after the protest broke out on the 11th, ham Alex Valladares (W7HU) says he was speaking with a Cuban operator on 7.130 megahertz in the 40-meter band, when their conversation was suddenly overwhelmed with interference. "We moved to 7170, and they jam the frequency there," he says. Valladares gave up for the night, but the following morning, he says, "I realize that they didn't turn off those jammers. [Then] we went to [7]140 the next day and they put jamming in there."
[...] Valladres alerted other hams to the interference, and soon operators were comparing notes on a forum on the QRZ.com website for hams. Hams across the southern United States and as far away as Minnesota and Rhode Island as well as Suriname in South America reported picking up the signals. The hams soon turned to nailing down the source of the signal. In previous decades, locating the source of a distant shortwave signal would have required special direction finding equipment, but modern hams have an ace up their sleeves in the form of the public KiwiSDR network.
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