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I guess nobody is safe....

K

kenglish

Guest
I saw something on this yesterday, but I have been trying to get more details.
It seems that he has had to retire from his long-time duties as one of the ham radio spectrum monitors, who looks for illegal transmissions on the ham bands.

Even with his many connections to regulatory authorities worldwide, he is unable to get the German authorities to stop a neighbor from wiping out his reception with an LED light bulb! Sounds like a vindictive neighbor has been harassing him, and the government can't/won't do anything.
I feel his pain!

http://www.southgatearc.org/news/20...ms-coordinator-to-leave-role.htm#.XjHuZvhlA0M
 
I recently read that the Green Bank radio telescope is now fighting a losing battle in their rfi wars. So many people are ignoring the rules...the radio astronomers don't even go beyond asking pleasantly anymore. Last night, I even read that one of their RFI guys joked that he doesn't want to "have to wear a bulletproof vest", and admitted that even he has an "illegal device" at home.
I suspect we will see "astronomer" listed on those click-bait sites that list "Jobs Without A Future", soon.
Glad my kids aren't planning on a science career...they all want to be Social Media Internet Beauty Influencers.?
 
From Wolfgang Hadel, DK2OM:

Very bad news My daily monitoring work is disturbed by a neighbouring LED lamp (various times). The owner does these actions intentionally since he knows the effect of his lamp. The German PTT Eschborn is informed since April 2016, when they have found the source (LED lamp). Reaction? Nothing to save my work. Result:The owner kept the old lamp as a disturbation transmitter. Working under such conditions is a difficult mission. Many thanks to the German PTT Eschborn! The example screenshot shows the situation on 5 MHz, where we got our new band. All bands from 3.5 28 MHz are concerned by the strong signals and harmonics.

Sounds like a psycho neighbor playing games with him. Too bad that the local PTT office won't do any more to help, and the national office at Konstanz can't jump in.
 
With all due respect to Wolfgang Hadel, if my neighbor knocked on my door and told me my LED light bulbs were causing him illegal interference, I'd hand him some tin foil and tell him to get help.

It is not consumers' responsibility to ensure the products they buy are within regulations.
 
Not sure about German law, but in the US the owner IS responsible for interference caused by their defective product.
He was notified, and the defective bulb was replaced (not sure who bought the replacement, but it sounds like he was "encouraged" by the authorities), but he kept the defective one, and used it to bully his neighbor for years.
Wolf ought to have grounds for a lawsuit (for harassment). I guess he could just mow his lawn starting at dawn every day, until the neighbor moves or gets violent enough to attract police attention. Unfortunately, Hams are usually far too nice.
 
kenglish said:
Not sure about German law, but in the US the owner IS responsible for interference caused by their defective product.
Click to expand...

You're referring to 47 CFR 15.5(c)? Yes, if some product is operating behind the rules, and causing "harmful interference", and they receive official notice from the FCC they are required to stop operating it.

However, according to my reading of Wolfgang's statement (see pg 2 here: http://www.iarums-r1.org/iarums/news2019/news1912.pdf), the lamp is permitted by German authorities. You can bet that if my neighbor called an FCC inspector out to my house, only to tell me that everything was in good order, I'd be running that lamp 24/7 out of spite.

The signal measured by DK2OM was -108.4 dBm on 5363 kHz, which is very likely compliant with the US standards given by 15.109(e) and 15.209(a), 30 uV/m at a distance of 30 meters. It's not even close to violating, unless I did something dumb and forgot a factor of 30dB when converting dBm to field strength, or if the distance from DK2OM's receive setup to the offensive light bulb is measured in miles and not feet.
 
Seems like a lot of effort to spite someone and destroy their life's work over a two-dollar light bulb.
I wonder how he treats the rest of the neighbors.
 
I'd love to get the whole story from Wolf and the German PTT folks.
He states that the noise is S9+10, with noise and harmonics up to 50 Mhz. That's a helluva lot of noise to deal with. Maybe the waterfall was taken with an SDR and a paperclip?
Is it illegal to grow marijuana in Germany? Maybe the neighbor is trying to cover grow-lamp noise.
Either way, a new bulb and some ferrites would be the proper, and neighborly, way to fix it.
 
I recently chatted with Wolf, who lamented that the local/closest PTT (not the national guys that he always worked with on international issues) were not well-versed in radio technology or troubleshooting, and that sort of set the tone for everything. I assume they assigned the report to some sort of "mailbox inspector".
I still can't believe the neighbor would go to such lengths to harass someone, and destroy his life. Or, maybe I can, from reading FCC citations to some US ham licensees who have no life beyond tormenting others, and defying the FCC.
Being kind to your neighbors seems to be a lost art.
 
This is not a hobby meant for populated areas. The one ham I know lives out in the sticks. When he was part of ham-fests, they would drive to the most remote mountain they could find. The idea of doing this in an apartment complex is pretty far fetched. I'm sure the complex doesn't approve of the yagi hanging out the bedroom window either.
 
Where does it say he is in an apartment?
From what I can tell, he lives in the burbs of a smaller city, on a lot that appears to be about an acre, and has lived there for decades. It's his own house (with outbuildings), not an apartment complex. There are no "yagis hanging out the bedroom windows". He has a modest sized tower at the back of his yard with a couple of beam antennas, not unlike hundreds of thousands of operators around the world. He also has thousands of dollars invested in the ham radio hobby part of it, and the IARU has supplied him with about $20K worth of professional equipment, just like government agencies use at their monitoring stations.
How is it that one jerk can destroy something like that, unless he's just "off his meds"?
 
Getting revenge for the sake of revenge?

Saw a huge sticker on my neighbor's car window this afternoon. It said his car was parked in an unauthorized spot, and would be towed at 5:00 PM (24 hours from the time they put the vision-blocking-sticker-with-non-removable-glue on it).
I tried to get hold of him, but he was at work. He carpools, so he wouldn't have seen it this morning.
I don't think it was in the wrong space...I walk by it several times a day, and it seemed normal.
At 5:00 tonight, I walked outside to take trash to the dumpster. A minute or two later a tow truck was racing toward me, with the neighbor's car hooked to it. I stopped the driver and explained that the car was in the same spot it has had for years, and maybe he should call someone and verify his information. He just kept insisting "its not my problem".
Dave got home later and I told him his car was missing.
He had to go and get money from the ATM, and go give the towing company $250. They showed him some blurry cell-phone photo that they claim showed him in the wrong spot.
Another neighbor said he thought it was in someone else's spot, too. It seems to me that, if someone accidentally parked two spaces away, the neighbor would recognize the car and figure someone made a mistake. The neighborly thing to do would be, park in an unassigned space a few feet away, and figure the other driver would move it as soon as he realized his mistake. It's what I've done numerous times.
As it is, Dave is out $250, has a damaged tire, and they stole his $20 in quarters that was laundry money.
What's a good revenge he could use on them?
 
Dave could install "illegal" LED lights.
 
I see where Wolf's old job has now been filled. The new IARU Region-1 Monitoring Service Coordinator is EA6AMM, Gaspar, who lives right across the street from the (Mediterranean) beach, in Mallorca. He's actually "downtown", with very close neighbors.
We'll see if the locals are more friendly there.
 
One problem the angry neighbor hasn't probably considered is that ham radio operators are capable of interfering with TV's and other consumer equipment. A yagi can put out a lot of PEP power in the direction it is aimed.
 
boombox4 said:
One problem the angry neighbor hasn't probably considered is that ham radio operators are capable of interfering with TV's and other consumer equipment. A yagi can put out a lot of PEP power in the direction it is aimed.
Click to expand...
Unless the ham is doing something illegal, or against accepted technical practice, the interference problem belongs to the person who is having it.
Of course, most hams are happy to cooperate with tests, and many will suggest solutions....even to the point of providing filters and other devices to the affected person. They are not obligated to pay for anything, and are advised not to make any modifications to someone else's equipment, due to liability issues.
My eyes roll 🙄 when I hear that some neighbor demands a tower be lower, thinking that will make the signal weaker. That just puts the neighboring houses right in the higher-powered part of the beam. The higher the tower, the less the signal is at/near ground level.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
kenglish said:
Unless the ham is doing something illegal, or against accepted technical practice, the interference problem belongs to the person who is having it.
Of course, most hams are happy to cooperate with tests, and many will suggest solutions....even to the point of providing filters and other devices to the affected person. They are not obligated to pay for anything, and are advised not to make any modifications to someone else's equipment, due to liability issues.
My eyes roll 🙄 when I hear that some neighbor demands a tower be lower, thinking that will make the signal weaker. That just puts the neighboring houses right in the higher-powered part of the beam. The higher the tower, the less the signal is at/near ground level.
Click to expand...
Some folks develop weird theories about things they cannot actually see. Here is a link to some complaints on the FCC web site from 2016. Some of these are quite amazing:
https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/foia-consumer-complaints-08292017-565-577-interference.pdf
 
Some of those are pure gold, especially that first one!
 
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