Serious HF interference hits Papua New Guinea

It would appear not only are we Amateurs concerned about those HF noises on 80 and 40 meters of late.

Serious HF service interference has been endured by various Papua New Guinea spectrum users.

An experimental Raytheon radar, developed for Australian conditions by Daronmont Technologies of South Australia has been installed on two islands in the Torres Straight.

A transmitter system uses vertically polarized high power frequency agile pulses of RF to illuminate the ocean surface for several hundred kilometers to the west of the source.

A separately located receiver system collects returned echoes and directs this data to another location for processing.

Essentially the system seeks to surveil the Torres Straight region as an aid to border security and deterrence of poaching, illegal gun and drug shipments and people smuggling. While the intent of the service is positive, the current experiments appear to leave no section of the lower HF spectrum without interference.

This is causing ongoing and frequent interference to the PNG users (and North Queensland spectrum users as well). As far as can be determined there are no "exclusion bands" as have now been developed by the Jindalee over the
horizon radar system used by the Australian Defence Force.

Perhaps the database that Jindalee uses could be provided to the Torres Strait system so interference could be minimized.

So it appears several sources independant of each other could be the cause of these "things that go whirrr in the night!"

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

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