Jammers on the repeaters

[af6bj]

The bay area 2/440 repeaters have been experiencing a rash of jamming activities from licensed LIDs and their chicken bander buddies. What is it about jamming that makes a man... (I'm sure they are men, women would have given up and gone shopping by now).....sit around all day waiting to jam someone... I don't get it.

I heard in the UK their OO's are paid and have the power to kick down doors and arrest the morons. I don't know if I want our OO's to have arresting power.... but kicking down doors and confiscating radios sounds reasonable since Riley isn't helping.:o

[KB1PRQ]

Some people are just dicks ;)

[kb3laz]

We have the same problem in my area all the time.
It just seems that people get a kick out of this sort of thing.
As for why people act like this I do not know.
Maybe they just need to grow up!
73

[KI4RVH]

We had one here on our local repeater. We just turned up our wattage and kept talking. Even if we couldn't understand the other party we acted like we did. He gave up soon enough. Just don't let them know that they're even causing trouble and they'll get bored. They want a reaction. Just ignore them or go fox hunting if the mood strikes you!

73

Chris

[KA8NCR]

Three words: doppler direction finding

[w6vps]

Unfortunaely Adam Henries are everywhere.
A good reason to see how well simplex really works.
73 - Paul

[ai4ep]

I fondly remember back in my old CB days, of folks who would play music on the cb channels...I would key up afterwards and say something similar to " gee, if he only had spent just a few more dollars, and bought a better radio, that music might have sounded a lot better "... !!

What does that have to do with the topic of this thread ?


Well, you could modify the part about playing music to jamming a repeater and you might agitate them enough to actually quit and go back to crawling under the bed and thumping on dry cat turds....and some that arent that dry yet.

We uns over here in Alabama dont have folks who intentionally jam repeaters...we dont do childish things like that ( leave that kind of stuff for you California folks to do ) .

We actually TALK with the mike keyed on our repeaters here in Alabama...no music, no sound effects, nothing but our twangy southern accents .

----------------------oh, by the way, our 75 meter 3.965 interference has left the frequency...they found another net to go jam ( bad for them, good for us ) !!

[KB9YCO]

We had one here on our local repeater. We just turned up our wattage and kept talking. Even if we couldn't understand the other party we acted like we did. He gave up soon enough. Just don't let them know that they're even causing trouble and they'll get bored. They want a reaction. Just ignore them or go fox hunting if the mood strikes you!

73 Chris

Exactly right, I don't know how many times I've preached the same thing. Ignore it and it goes away nine times out of ten. Keep talking and don't acknowledge the fact that you hear anything at all. A vague response to what was said, etc. and usually you can make it seem like everything is normal. Sure, once in awhile there's that really dedicated loser that has all day to spend just waiting by his radio; but, for the most part it is just someone looking for a reaction.
I know at least two repeater owners who have actually given themselves a reputation for freaking out about kerchunking and jamming. Of course everyone knows what happened, now they do it more because they get a reaction!
Also, if you have some people with some time and decent equipment then DF'ing is not only fun, it's rewarding. Most times just the fact that the person knows that they were seen and/or their location is known is enough.
I know ignoring it doesn't work in every case, and I've heard some extreme ones, especially in more populated areas, but for the most part it is prank call mentality and if there is no reaction they will generally move on.

[n4bfd]

Our local ARES group had about 20 guys build direction finding beams made with 3 elements of tape measure material and PVC.

Now we are doing fox hunts as part of the club activity.

That pretty much scares the jammers away hopefully.... at least here in Greensboro N.C.

[WA6MHZ]

Back in the 80s, the Jammers were the GOOD GUYS here in San Diego! Now that might be hard to believe, but we had (and still have) this repeater known as the 0464 Sand Box! About that time, some OFs took over the repeater and held it hostage, blabbing day and night some of the most Insane, Droll, ear-bleeding nonsense you ever heard. The kingpins ( all silent keys by now) were JumboDumbo Jack, CaCa Cal, And Mister Senility himself, Carmen. Their mentor was the ringleader of them all, Jammer Jimmy. They baited jammers, all ran GREEN BOXes (Super QRO 2 meter amps) and multi antenna arrays with who knows how much ERP to try and out jam the jammers. It was complete bedlam around the clock, and lots of off the air mischief as well. The best prank was when someone sent in a forged FCC 610 asking for a call sign change for Jimmy. Boy, was he hopping mad when a new callsign arrived in the mail!!! A whole radio club was formed just because of this war. It was exciting listenning, just to see what would happen next. Eventually, the OFs passed away and the Jammers returned to normal hams, and the repeater almost went dormant. It is still in use, for normal ham to ham communications, but doesn't have the thirlls and excitement it had during the Jammer Wars of the 80s!

[kb9ofm]

Some people just have no life,jamming is how they get there kicks.
And they call that fun!!!!!!

[K7JEM]

Back in the 80s, the Jammers were the GOOD GUYS here in San Diego! Now that might be hard to believe, but we had (and still have) this repeater known as the 0464 Sand Box! About that time, some OFs took over the repeater and held it hostage, blabbing day and night some of the most Insane, Droll, ear-bleeding nonsense you ever heard. The kingpins ( all silent keys by now) were JumboDumbo Jack, CaCa Cal, And Mister Senility himself, Carmen. Their mentor was the ringleader of them all, Jammer Jimmy. They baited jammers, all ran GREEN BOXes (Super QRO 2 meter amps) and multi antenna arrays with who knows how much ERP to try and out jam the jammers. It was complete bedlam around the clock, and lots of off the air mischief as well. The best prank was when someone sent in a forged FCC 610 asking for a call sign change for Jimmy. Boy, was he hopping mad when a new callsign arrived in the mail!!! A whole radio club was formed just because of this war. It was exciting listenning, just to see what would happen next. Eventually, the OFs passed away and the Jammers returned to normal hams, and the repeater almost went dormant. It is still in use, for normal ham to ham communications, but doesn't have the thirlls and excitement it had during the Jammer Wars of the 80s!

Yeah, guys today have no idea of what jamming is really like. Nothing compares to the "repeater wars" of the 70's and 80's.

That 04/64 was a piece of work. We used to eavesdrop on it occasionally from El Paso, Texas, through our remote base network. Was good for late night entertainment.

Joe

[ka5piu]

Hello.

The trouble in San Antonio is just as bad.
Somebody crossbands 140 and 440.
The one club, AARO, seems to be the main target.
The amazing thing is that almost everyone KNOWS who it is.
About 6 malcontents.
In Houston, one idiot decided to try and jam this one station.
The gent responded by stealing his electric meter, just plopped the thing out.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to get a meter and socket replaced? or how much it costs?
And, we hams wonder why there is an image problem.

[K0RGR]

I wonder which repeaters in the Bay Area are getting hit this time around.

As I recall Grizzly Peak has been shut down numerous times due to this.

It only takes one major jerk to wipe out 2 meters over a wide area, particularly when the repeaters are on mountain tops. We used to have groups of people out there with doppler and phase-angle search equipment who could track the offenders down fairly quickly. It's time to reform the posse .

[kb2vxa]

Repeaters? BOOORRRRING.

[ka5piu]

Repeaters? BOOORRRRING.

Hello.

What do you suggest, 146.520?
Guess where a bunch of the jammers hang?
Guess where the VHF side of the crossbanding is in a lot of cases.
In order to do 2 VHF frequencies, one will set his rig to crossband, VHF to UHF.
Another does the same.
In this manner, 2 nitwits can take out 3 frequencies at once.
Creative.
Not very constructive, but creative.

[KD6NIG]

I still monitor local repeaters mostly for emergency traffic or to give directions if someone needs them. But there are other annoyances out there too, like the guy who doesn't own the repeater but seems to think he should traffic cop it, and some people who once you start talking to them, its sometimes hard to get them to stop....

Simplex works well, and I'd say a lions share of my communication is now on 2m SSB or simplex.

Or packet :)

Repeaters are good if you need the long haul, but if you're talking to someone within 20 miles and you're not in the middle of, say, New York City with buildings on all sides, simplex works perfectly fine. Sure, its not always S9+20, but it works.

:)

[KC0TLW]

Yawn... ;)

It smells, and is actually NotFunny. :eek:

[KD8BVS]

We had one here on our local repeater. We just turned up our wattage and kept talking. Even if we couldn't understand the other party we acted like we did. He gave up soon enough. Just don't let them know that they're even causing trouble and they'll get bored. They want a reaction. Just ignore them or go fox hunting if the mood strikes you!

73

Chris

We had a guy that did this a lot on our repeater. I live 6 miles away from our repeater, and I just turned my power up to 80 watts to talk right over him. We wound up finding the guy about 20 minutes later. The repeater trustee was on his way home from work and heard it happening, so he decided to do some fox hunting! The guy was stupid enough to keep his mic. keyed for 10 minutes straight so it was very easy to find him. I would have loved to see the reaction on the guys face when our repeater trustee (Jim) showed up at his door.

[K8MHZ]

I like fox hunting!

So far there have been very few jammers. Fox hunting is very popular around here and we have some good hunters and that is known by the locals.

Actually, we have had more people jamming Central Dispatch than our repeaters.

Anyone sending out a radio signal to cause trouble is just asking to be found.

[wa6itf]

If you really want to go back in time try 1968 in New York City. The then brand new WA2SUR repeater came on the air from 70 Pine Street on the chanel pair of 146.13 in and 146.76 out. Within weeks it had a following of about 100 or so early FM'ers -- and one jammer -- who spent all day and all night making "frog noises." It took almost two years and the loan of some sophisticated DFing gear -- sophisticated for that era -- but he was eventually caught. I think he turned out to be one of the control operators tht nobody would have otherwise suspected.

But the bet jamming stories of all happened out here in California from the late 1950's through the mid-1960's on 146.76 Simplex. It was all caught for posterity in a series of articles written by the late Kendall webster Sessions, K6MVH, titled "The Chronicles of .76."

Those guys developed jamming to a pure artform! If you can find a copy of the Chronicles -- do so. You will not believe much of it -- but its all 100% true -- right down to the frequency having its own "secret police" -- the SSSS -- Seven Six Secret Service. I knew Sessions when we were both writers for 73 Magazine and he swore that the "Chronicles" were as he wrote them -- adding that nobody could possibly create anything in fiction that came near the facts regarding 146.76 in SoCal.

de
WA6ITF

[wb6mmj]

The bay area 2/440 repeaters have been experiencing a rash of jamming activities from licensed LIDs and their chicken bander buddies. What is it about jamming that makes a man... (I'm sure they are men, women would have given up and gone shopping by now).....sit around all day waiting to jam someone... I don't get it.

I heard in the UK their OO's are paid and have the power to kick down doors and arrest the morons. I don't know if I want our OO's to have arresting power.... but kicking down doors and confiscating radios sounds reasonable since Riley isn't helping.:o

The biggest reason some people "Jam" repeaters is for the attention it gives them when the regular operators of the repeater comment on the Jamming.
That is what the Jammer wants, attention. Don`t give them any attention and they will go somewhere else where they will get that much needed attention.
I owned 3 repeaters years ago and not giving the jammer attention worked very well.

[kw7dsp]

Back in the 80s, the Jammers were the GOOD GUYS here in San Diego! Now that might be hard to believe,... ... but doesn't have the thirlls and excitement it had during the Jammer Wars of the 80s!

Good Guys? Thrills? you sure you got the right service?

[kw7dsp]

We had one here on our local repeater. We just turned up our wattage and kept talking. ...


And what did that accomplish? May work on Simplex (maybe) or CB, but I am not sure what it did for you on a repeater or FM, unless you were closer to the repeater receiving antenna.

[wb6mmj]

Back in the 80s, the Jammers were the GOOD GUYS here in San Diego! Now that might be hard to believe, but we had (and still have) this repeater known as the 0464 Sand Box! About that time, some OFs took over the repeater and held it hostage, blabbing day and night some of the most Insane, Droll, ear-bleeding nonsense you ever heard. The kingpins ( all silent keys by now) were JumboDumbo Jack, CaCa Cal, And Mister Senility himself, Carmen. Their mentor was the ringleader of them all, Jammer Jimmy. They baited jammers, all ran GREEN BOXes (Super QRO 2 meter amps) and multi antenna arrays with who knows how much ERP to try and out jam the jammers. It was complete bedlam around the clock, and lots of off the air mischief as well. The best prank was when someone sent in a forged FCC 610 asking for a call sign change for Jimmy. Boy, was he hopping mad when a new callsign arrived in the mail!!! A whole radio club was formed just because of this war. It was exciting listenning, just to see what would happen next. Eventually, the OFs passed away and the Jammers returned to normal hams, and the repeater almost went dormant. It is still in use, for normal ham to ham communications, but doesn't have the thirlls and excitement it had during the Jammer Wars of the 80s!

Just where is Jimmy now? That was VCE, right?

[KC9JIQ]

Yeah, guys today have no idea of what jamming is really like. Nothing compares to the "repeater wars" of the 70's and 80's.

That 04/64 was a piece of work. We used to eavesdrop on it occasionally from El Paso, Texas, through our remote base network. Was good for late night entertainment.

Joe

How about 435? The repeater is the most used, busiest repeater in the USA, and it used to be 24/7 activity, some maculous interference, but legitimate QSO's did occur,Cannot see it getting worse than Jack Gerritsen.

My question is how does the era of Jack Gerritsen compare to the repeater wars of the 80's?

[KI4RVH]

And what did that accomplish? May work on Simplex (maybe) or CB, but I am not sure what it did for you on a repeater or FM, unless you were closer to the repeater receiving antenna.

It worked just fine. Evidently he was using less power than us. I was running 100 watts. Others were running close to the same. We were using radios with base antennas. My antenna is close to 40 feet up. And the people we couldn't understand we acted like we did. So the guy thought he wasn't doing anything and went away. Haven't you ever heard a double on a repeater and heard one station while the other was wiped out? It sounds terrible but you can still make someone out lots of times.

73

Chris

[WA6MHZ]

Just where is Jimmy now? That was VCE, right?

Yes, he is a Silent Key

[WA6MHZ]

How about 435? The repeater is the most used, busiest repeater in the USA, and it used to be 24/7 activity, some maculous interference, but legitimate QSO's did occur,Cannot see it getting worse than Jack Gerritsen.

My question is how does the era of Jack Gerritsen compare to the repeater wars of the 80's?

435 , though I only monitor it when up in the LA area, seems to be considerably toned down now that Riley has scared off most of the misfits. But there was a time not too far back that the language and conversations were what you would expect from a Late night Comedy club! XXX was too easy a rating for it!! They were into this First Amendment stuff that they could say all the 4 letter words they wanted and the FCC couldn't do a thing. But then RILEY came to town, and that was that!

Gerritsen was another matter. He had this hatred for George Bush, and constantly played anti-Bush tapes all day long, from repeater to repeater. Most Jammers try and stay annonymous, but Jack had no problem letting people know who he was. He opennly defied the FCC, more or less MOONING them. Well, he finally was tripped up and last I heard, he was breaking rocks on Hard time! But that Jamming was far far different than the 80s Jammer wars, where jammers were snipers sneaking in between transmissions for momentary comments teasing the OFs.

[wb6mmj]

Yes, he is a Silent Key

I didn`t know he had passed away. Sorry to hear that. Thank you for replying.
By they way, I was in the middle of all that stuff back then. I learned allot from it also.
I just looked up Jim`s old call. Interesting! It came up with "Secret underground orgnanization of amateur radio"
What the heck?

[kf6rdn]

435 , though I only monitor it when up in the LA area, seems to be considerably toned down now that Riley has scared off most of the misfits. But there was a time not too far back that the language and conversations were what you would expect from a Late night Comedy club! XXX was too easy a rating for it!! They were into this First Amendment stuff that they could say all the 4 letter words they wanted and the FCC couldn't do a thing. But then RILEY came to town, and that was that!

Gerritsen was another matter. He had this hatred for George Bush, and constantly played anti-Bush tapes all day long, from repeater to repeater. Most Jammers try and stay annonymous, but Jack had no problem letting people know who he was. He opennly defied the FCC, more or less MOONING them. Well, he finally was tripped up and last I heard, he was breaking rocks on Hard time! But that Jamming was far far different than the 80s Jammer wars, where jammers were snipers sneaking in between transmissions for momentary comments teasing the OFs.

It's still fairly colorful, I was listening to it while I was reading the other night, and it's all legal, though they certainly push the envelope, and on any other machine would not be acceptable. I would say about R rated. This was late at night as well.. About the same time you would hear such on 75.

[ai4ep]

...glad we over here in Alabama dont have to put up with such childish antics on our 2 meter repeaters.

You folks should be ashamed at putting up with it for 24 hours, much less weeks / months & years.

[ai4ep]

///I must have accedently inspired some one to not post and to actually DO something, due to the lack of intelligent responses...or ANY response, for that matter.

[KI4RVH]

///I must have accedently inspired some one to not post and to actually DO something, due to the lack of intelligent responses...or ANY response, for that matter.

Maybe people are at work or you are on their ignore list. Who knows?

73

Chris

[ai4ep]

that IGNORE LIST can work 2 ways.