The Hidden Diablo Mountain Amateur Radio Jammer

recently on the channel we've been looking at historical radio topics cb radio in other countries as well as the darker side of amateur radio along with deliberate air traffic control interference and explosive booby traps left at repeater sites we looked at jammers planted nearby repeaters in the 1980s to cause disruption a number of people commented on the lack of explanation from me as to why these activities took place what motivated them and what the individuals involved actually got out of it the truth is i have no idea why does anybody disrupt a hobby however today we'll be telling a story i was sent by an individual who actually decided to jam a repeater with a camouflage jamming device and antenna so let's take a trip over the atlantic to mount diablo in concord california this is the home of the kasich pou two meter repeater in contra costa [Applause] county choose your destiny this individual decided recently that for his own reasons he had to take the drastic step to deploy his own jammer on the repeater as with previous videos they're not designed to give people ideas or encourage this type of behavior we all know it goes on and i'm only going to tell the story for this reason i won't be going into the technical aspects of the device except that it was made with a bowfeng uv5r and a cheap mp3 player the jammer was named the anoyatron as it was low powered and not really designed to deny people use of the repeater the individual had the idea that the radiometers that were the target of the jammer were experienced in radio direction finding and that it would be found in less than 24 hours the key kit direction radio directional finder it looks pretty advanced you familiar got four and a little connector piece in the middle and then a nice big box to the left of it nav 2020 or yeah i can't see it on my glasses but uh uh i guess it's configured with google earth oh yeah it uses google earth oh yeah yeah this is nice it's like just under 400 bucks looks pretty uh worthy therefore mp3 recordings that were played as transmissions were kept short and brief interspaced with semi-random bits of silence there was quite a lot of paranoia from the individual who went to the trouble of shipping off any serial numbers or date codes wearing gloves wiping the equipment down and even encasing the bowfeng and mp3 player in epoxy resin if that wasn't enough the whole lot was then encased in concrete inside a plastic ammo box this effectively made it a single use and disposable device he loaded up the mp3 player with a 24-hour playlist composed of silences and various audio samples on an sd card this way he could have it played 24 7 but make it transmit on a rough schedule when power was applied it started the mp3 player at track one he programmed the bowfeng on the repeater's frequency and turned on vox then he hooked up the output of the mp3 player directly into the mic jack with a cable the whole unit was then camouflaged hung in a tree and powered by connecting the power leads which were covered in epoxy resin it was secured in place using a heavy-duty bicycle cable and lock and it was hooked up to a homemade three-element yagi constructed from some metal rod the anotron went live on the 15th of august 2020 at around 3pm pacific standard time it ran for three days before the batteries ran out but it did transmit on the repeater for the whole time all the local amateurs on the repeater made comments about it but nothing actually happened the individual didn't plan on going to receive the equipment but six weeks later curiosity got better of him and he drove by and checked on the jammer he looked for any trail cameras anybody may have happened to set up and found that the device was still in place during this time there were other active jammers on k6 pou one played a siren and others played short noise type maker audio clips so let's look at the psychology around this he was a really paranoid person and he said in his own words that he would never typically be such an idiot and willfully jam a repeater but he was compelled to do so for political reasons he didn't want to get found as he didn't want this move to be associated with him as it would have had potential significant repercussions there were a few intended uses for the anointron it was designed to create more repeater traffic annoy all the users and very much be pointed with a political message almost anyone could talk over it when it was active due to its concealed location and low power output the individual isn't well known in the amateur radio community but felt that the atmosphere on k6pou was toxic he said that the group were getting more toxic and aggressive after the annoyotron was planted which led to him basically turning the radio off and walking away from the hobby he's told me that his sins all died down and some of the milder locals have come back everyone is identifying their stations often and most of the other jammers have gone quiet and conversation has for the most part returned to general radchewing so make of that what you will it's intended to be an insight into the mind of a repeater jammer which many asked for in previous videos now i just need to point out that unlike the gb3 mh jammer which happened just before i was born this one did happen last year but i do live 5 200 miles away from the repeater [Applause] [Applause] five

Channel: Ringway Manchester

Views: 238,539

Keywords: k6pou, mount diablo, california, mount diablo radio tower, radio mast, radio transmitter, ham radio, amateur radio, jamming device, radio jammer, ham radio jammer, ardf, radio direction finding, radio bug, hidden radio bug, hidden radio jammer, jamming, pirate radio, radio site, radio station, mt diablo, spy radio, secret radio, abandoned radio station, abandoned radio site, secret radio site, spy station, number station, concord ca, arrl, radio transmission

Id: wZjInmHsWdM

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/nn3w]

I can remember two incidents involving 147.435 using creative jammers.

• One was a buried radio jammer that involved (IIRC) a HT that was placed inside a .50 cal ammo box and was buried next to the wall of a fast food restaurant. The radio was on the wall that faced the repeater (line of sight). The radio was powered by a small solar cell (4 or 5 watts) so it went on for quite a while.
• Second was a HT which had its PTT button locked down and included a backup battery. This was surreptitiously placed into a display case at an electronics store (can't remember if it was HRO, Frys, or Radio Shack). That one took several days to find as well.

[u/strolls]

The video narrator takes pains to say that such activity is wrong, that he doesn't encourage it and that the jammer was made "for political reasons".

Then an explanation is given during the last 2 minutes of the video, in relatively small text which isn't acknowledged by the narrator:

Note from the jammer: what pushed me over the edge was when people were talking about how great the police brutality was and disgusting comments about immigrants and Nancy Pelosi.

[u/WizerOne]

Isn't this activity illegal? Where is the FCC?

[u/k6mju]

That squelch tail on the repeater. Geezus.

[u/True-Anteater4217]

Time to setup a Kerberos SDR at every repeater site.

This makes it easy to locate jammers.