FireLink

What frequency are you on? This is highly illegal, and there are ways of catching them. There are also some pretty cool ways of teaching them a lesson in your own hands. If it is UHF/VHF, odds are they are somebody that has a ham radio that is modified.

We have this same problem here too. They get on the radio and play music, burp, fart, yell at us while we are on a call. We even had a man get on the radio and tell us to leave him alone, and let him drink his beer and smoke his crack rock in peace. Dispatch informed this individual that we were on a fire call and this had nothing to do with him. He just proceeded to curse at the dispatcher. This happened while we were on a call. Then this was broadcasted, we were prebriefing on scene. So I know it wasn't anyone that was on our scene. We just look at each other with this dumbfounded look on our faces.

Dispatch and other firefighters who are on our repeater will get on tell them to stop, but I find that when they do that, it only egg's them on. I know that this is HIGHLY illegal and I REALLY hope that law enforcement finds them soon. They usually start this obnoxious activity when a department is on a call or sometime betweem 12am - 4am.  And it's not just when we are on a call, it happens to 2 other departments as well.

Not only that, I have heard people get on and ask other member's to PX their cell phones, then broadcast the phone number out over the radio. One department in the area is particularly bad about this. They don't even need to be on a call to do this, they just do it. It is against our department's rules to do that. We keep a updated phone list posted in the fire house and it is everyone's responsibility to update those numbers in their cell phones.

What a pain. We had similar trouble with this until we went to 800 MHz like silverwulf said. It turned out to be CB talker with boosters or linnears I think they're called. Not much was done about that crowd until it affected airport traffic. The FAA and FCC started hanging around. Needless to say, we don't have that problem anymore. Try to get the FCC involved. Depending on severity, they get hot under the collar about people busting thier airwaves.

This is also posted in "Ask A Firefighter"

Like I said on the other forum send me a PM... or E-Mail me at kd7cao@gmail.com since it'll be the weekend now. I will do what I can to hook you up with the right people.

It starting to happen alot around here. We used to never have any problems with people getting on our radios except they always hit the talk button repedetly. But now it seems that civilans are getting on and using foul language. I heard the f-word on there and I was suprised to hear that. Dispatch eventually just never responded to them.

Froogsey says ...

It could also they found a lost radio and are having fun with it. Either way it is illegal to operate on any licensed channel without permission! Inform the FCC and they will take action.

We had that problem on our VHF handhelds..... but we know that the handhelds are good upto a certain distance.... so when they got on again we told the we know where you are and they were like bullshit.... we told them well the Michigan State Police is enroute to Jose Lake and should be there in 15 minutes..... NEVER HEARD THEM AGAIN

We usually do not have many problems at all with the radios.  There is a lot of traffic but it is usually the county fire.  We usually change to channel 2 or 3 to stay away from the mass majority of radio traffic.

Good to hear, hope they did get caught.

Radio's can be weired sometimes, if you get the right time of day you can get onto all kinds of crossed radio waves.

I remember about 10 years ago I had a little Uniden CB radio in my truck, picked up some Hams, one in Alaska and the other in FL, I think. I keyed up my mic and they heard me, talked to them for about a min. It was the strangest thing to pick them up on such a different channel.

We haven't had anymore trouble. Our repeater system sucks. There is always something wrong with it. Sometimes when you key up, it's like it is open and it sounds like you are going through a tunnel. If we don't want dispatch to listen to us, we switch over to talk around but sometimes dispatch can hear us on that frequency. It's all messed up.

Sometimes in the summer, around this time of year, the atmosphere changes and allows FM signals (The mode of communication most widely used in VHF and UHF) that normally travel 35 -70 miles to travel several hundred miles.  Depending on the position of the Sun they other party may not even know there is radio traffic on the frequency.  It can be a problem!  Too much radio traffic or interference for clear Emergency Operations or persons vandalizing the frequency interfering with Emergency Traffic.  I agree with emtjad and Chase, contact your local Amateur Radio Club or the FCC and have them check it out.  As for the hams operating on the CB (which is AM) the CB band is outside the Ham band and it was probably a couple of CBers running excess power.  Not too many hams would risk their Federal License to operate outside the band when they have better communications abilities (LSB/USB sideband ) in the Ham bands.

dracosloe says ...

we rarely have that problem, there are ways to impede that, we have several safeguards in programming our radios, private mail me and I can explain it USMCFF413, if the same basic safe guards are in place then someone lost a radio.

 

good idea

Back when we were on uhf/vhf we occasionally had trouble with this.  The FCC at that time had a script that we would read that would threaten all sorts of legal action that would/could be taken.  It really didn't help.  It's been much nicer since we've switch to a trunked 800 system, we just disable radio's now. 

We haven't had any more trouble lately. It turns out that some idiot stolen one of the fire depts radios and used it as a toy. It was probably an ex firefighter who got fired and wanted to get back at us.

I know what you mean. We had a FF who everyone thought he said a curse word and everyone flipped out and went to a meeting. When they played back the tapes, it turned out that he didn't say it anything bad it just sounded like he did.

Thank you for the advise. I'm glad they haven't accessed our tactical channels for fire ground operations. I can go online and look up my depts frequency it's that easy. Our tactical channels aren't listed thank god. But thank you for the advise.