Intruder Watch

Intruder Watch began 50 years ago, and is just as important, if not more so, as Region 3 IARU Monitoring Service Coordinator Peter Young VK3MV explains.

The Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA) is a foundation member of the International Amateur Radio Union known as the IARU. The IARU consists of member amateur radio societies around the world with the prime aim of representing and promoting amateur radio and the allocation and protection of amateur spectrum allocations in various forums.

One of its important roles is to monitor the Amateur Service exclusive HF spectrum allocations for unwanted intrusions by other radiocommunications services.

Why a Monitoring System? Well, the amateur service must take action to protect its bands because an administration permitting a station to operate contrary to the International Telecommunications Union Radio Regulations may assert
that its operation is not in breach of the Radio Regulations because there have been no complaints of harmful interference caused by that station.

Harmful interference is defined within the ITU Regulations and is the first test before the complaint is accepted.

Therefore the objective of the IARU-MS is the removal of Intruders from exclusive amateur bands.

How do we do this? The success of the IARU-MS depends on Member Societies acting to influence the licensees of Intruders in their country or the administrations of their country to remove Intruders from exclusive amateur bands or, if the Intruder is in another country, to request their
administration to lodge a complaint to the administration of the country in which the Intruder is located.

Administrations generally will undertake its own measurements before action is undertaken.
Some complaints result in the removal of the intruder reasonably quickly, but unfortunately, some may take years to resolve, particularly if it involves an administration in another country.

A recent example, has been the successful removal of a ionospheric over the horizon radar, located in Australia that was causing interference in the 30 meter amateur band. Although the 30 meter band is a secondary amateur service allocation, the licence conditions imposed by the ACMA requires that this radar does not cause interference to other radiocommunications services, including the amateur service.

This could not have been achieved without interference reports being filed with our IW coordinator.

In Australia the WIA's intruder watch coordinator is Karl Henning, VK6WX who with other observers have years of experience in identifying and logging intruders as well as coordinating all the Australian observations from other
amateurs in Australia.

What is an observation? This involves listening to signals and determining if they are genuine amateur QSO's. If an intruder is suspected then details are recorded. That is date, time, emission - for example upper or lower sideband AM, CW, or digital, the signal bandwidth, the bearing direction, the general nature of the signal, if some form of identification is used and any other characteristics that may assist the identification and location of the intruder.

The WIA needs more IW volunteers!

We always need more amateurs to undertake intruder watch to lighten the load. If you value your HF spectrum why not become a IW reporter?

Want more information?

The WIA's website under the "members" tab has more information - look for the intruder watch tab.

Peter Young, VK3MV
Region 3 Monitoring Service Coordinator and WIA Director