[CQ-Contest] Potential HF Radar Interference from Puerto Rico

[Jim Breakall]

To all:

I have just found out about a French HF radar that is located on
the south coast of Puerto Rico that will be operating from March
8th to April 8th on 7.2, 14.2, and 21.3 MHz.  They are working
informally with a NASA rocket program in Puerto Rico and tried to
get the FCC to give them some type of license for this operation.
Apparently the State Department was involved as well and they
decided to turn it all over to the FCC and NASA.  The FCC has
said that it cannot give any license for any such operations for
NASA or the French to use Amateur bands for the specified transmissions
and period of operations.  It did grant an informal authorization
to proceed on a non-interference basis which means that if an incident
of interference occurs, the French group must shut down their operations
immediately.  I thought you should all know about this since the
WPX contest is coming up this weekend and QRM is bad enough without
having any extra signals of unknown origin on the bands.  The French
radar is located at Ft. Allen, Puerto Rico at longitude 18N and
latitude 66.5W.  It will use radar pulses of 100-200 uS with an
interpulse period of 1-2 mS.  It will use arrays of stacked yagis
which will be beaming 12 degrees west of north (pretty close to
right at the US east coast) and a power of 300 watts.

The Point-of-Contact for interference reporting is Mr. Henry
Schuett at 216-433-5545 and email at hschuett at lerc.nasa.gov or
Felipe (no last name given) at 757-824-1623 and no Email given.
They are then supposed to contact the French and tell them to
shut down their operations.

I have not heard them yet myself but another ham in Puerto Rico
did hear them we think and independently reported interference
to the Navy Communications Direction-Finding site at Sabana Seca,
Puerto Rico.  He did not know about this operation at the time
he heard them and reported them.

It is hoped that nobody will hear them much, but just in case, it looks
like the ham spectrum is being protected and the hams have some actions
than can be taken.

73 Jim WA3FET/KP4 at Arecibo, Puerto Rico


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