Church broadcast intruders on 10-metre band

You will recall that in June of last year we informed you that Ireland's regulator ComReg had introduced a Wireless Public Address licensing Scheme.

This scheme allows religious and community organisations to be licensed to transmit services or events from their public address systems for the benefit of people in local communities.

Two bands of 40 channels each 10 kHz wide between 27.6 and 27.995 MHz were allocated for this purpose. Base
station ERP is 0dBW (1 watt AM) or 6dBW (4 watts FM) with a vertically polarised antenna. Many churches throughout the country are using this scheme and if licensed and operating within the terms of the licence these transmissions are legal.

However, the Irish Radio Transmitters Society has been notified by the national coordinator of Intruder Watch for the German National Society DARC that transmissions of church services, which seem to be originating from Ireland, have been taking place in the 28 MHz amateur radio band.
WAV files have been provided of such transmissions on 28.105 MHz.

IRTS would ask members to listen out on this frequency and on the lower portion of the 28 MHz band generally at appropriate times for their local areas, particularly on Sundays to see if unauthorised stations in the 10-metre band can be identified. Ground wave propagation would be fairly short at these frequencies so specific identification of stations may be possible from some reference in notices to local events. If you cannot identify the station and you have a beam antenna you could take a bearing on the station, which in conjunction with bearings taken by other stations could help identify the general area from which the transmission originates.

If you hear anything worth reporting you should send a
report to Thos Caffrey EI2JD the IRTS Intruder Watch
coordinator at QTHR or to “thoscaffrey at hotmail dot
com” with a copy to Sean Nolan EI7CD at QTHR or to
“ei7cd at gofree dot indigo dot ie”.

The report should include date, time, frequency, possible location of the station if identified, beam heading and other relevant information. If the station is identified from an
announcement of local events, details should be given.
It is in our own interests to identify these stations to preserve the exclusive nature of the 28 MHz allocation.

The matter has already been reported to ComReg who will act on the matter if we can provide locational information.

Source: IRTS