Around the 7,000 square mile parish he calls home, he is referred to as Father Leo. To the 185 families in Circle, Richey and Jordan, Montana, where he has served the past ten years he is a spiritual father and guide, celebrating with them weddings, baptisms and funerals. To the United States Air Force, he is Chaplain, Major, Leo McDowell,

(Father Leo rocks! Fr. Leo is the Personal Radio Assn’s honorary chaplain. A GMRS licensee from Montana, he likes gadgets and all things radio. I know Fr. Leo is going to be a big fan of the radio room on base. PRA members are encouraged to offer prayers for Fr. Leo on his mission as well as for all of the American service members deployed worldwide. God bless you Air Force Major Fr. Leo!)

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(Annapolis, MD) A member of the Personal Radio Association today reported that from one or more of the three foreign ships anchored below the Annapolis Bay Bridge radio transmissions were heard on GMRS repeater inputs 467.575, 467.650, and 467.700 MHz. One ship seen arriving at about 1030 hours was using 467.575 to handle anchoring procedures.

Ships in US waters are NOT permitted to use these radio frequencies yet some ship’s masters and radio officers remain clueless of applicable international agreements. Ships operating on these channels frequently interfere with LICENSED GMRS users of the radio channels. PopularWireless.com coined the problem “Foreign Shipping Interference,” or FSI. The General Mobile Radio Service is used by American families to coordinate their family activities and personal business. In Europe and Asia GMRS is allocated to the maritime service.

The United States Government, through the Federal Communications Commission revised the list of AUTHORIZED frequencies for use by foreign vessels in 2005. These were negotiated by ITU countries in 2003.

” 5.288 In the territorial waters of the United States and the Philippines, the preferred frequencies for use by on-board communication stations shall be 457.525 MHz, 457.550 MHz, 457.575 MHz and 457.600 MHz paired, respectively, with 467.750 MHz, 467.775 MHz, 467.800 MHz and 467.825 MHz. The characteristics of the equipment used shall conform to those specified in Recommendation ITU-R M.1174-1.”

“Ships have been quiet lately as they sail past PRA HQ at Plum Point, Maryland, ” said Doug Smith, President of the PRA, Inc., Board of Trustees. “It appears the compliance to international treaty may only be within radio range of PRA HQ. The PRA has had similar reports from New York Harbor and the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Smith. A log of FSI complaints is maintained at the Personal Wireless BBS at PopularWireless.com.

(Personal Radio Assn., Inc – Huntingtown, MD) A PRA Enforcement Team member in Virginia made the Association aware of a serious GMRS abuse. A company specializing in parking lot call boxes marketed call boxes designed for use on GMRS radio frequencies. A system in Virginia was found at a local school that used 462.575 MHz, a GMRS repeater output channel. The PRA asked FCC Special Counsel Riley Hollingsworth to investigate. PRA Board of Trustees President Doug Smith referred to this practice as a serious and “pernicious abuse” of GMRS. GMRS licensees throughout the United States are encouraged to monitor GMRS in their communities and listen for and report these devices. Hollingsworth told the PRA that the FCC has information that the GMRS parking lot call boxes are no longer sold. Despite this information a new system was heard from atop a repeater site covering the area around Culpepper Virginia the weekend of November 17, 2007. PRA monitors said it sounded like a new parking lot call box system was being tested. GMRS licensees in the area are actively looking for the unlicensed system which is already causing interfernece to licensed users of the General Mobile Radio Service. GMRS licensees can report commercial intruders on GMRS channels directly to the FCC or through the program set up up by the Personal Radio Association at http://popularwireless.com/blog1/go.

Is the Personal Radio Association having an impact on Foreign Shipping Interference? We can only hope. On Sunday evening, September 1, 2007 at about 1856 hrs EDST the receiver at PopWireless HQ logged and recorded a radio transmission on 467.550 MHz. This is a frequency allocated to ships in other countries and is specifically not for use by these ships in the United States. Did they know that? A ship’s crewman asked the Boson to turn off his walkie talkie just as the ship began to pass PopularWireless HQ. (Hear the audio clip.)

The PRA FSI log contained the following entry, in part:

A number of ships passing close together this afternoon:

Liberia Niteroi, mmsi: 212105000 call sign P3MJ9, registered to Cyprus sailing to Newport News

The Texas, mmsi: 267594000, call sign LMWR3, from Norway. I think this is the ship just based on the accents of the sailors. That and my five element Yagi got a great signal pointed directly at the ship.

M/V Morning Melody, mmsi: 354047000, call sign 3EGS6, out of Panama

—————————————————

All were quiet as they sailed by and on at least one ship the Boson’s walkie talkie was off.

(Huntingtown, MD) It is possible to identify an in-transit ship as the most likely source of FSI (Foreign Shipping Interference) in the GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service.) Using an AIS – Automatic Identification System receiver and a directional antenna the signal from ship’s AIS transponder will tell you the ship’s name, it’s ITU MMSI registration, call sign, country of registration and destination. Using the MMSI look up at the ITU you can determine what company owns the ship.

On the Chesapeake Bay near Plum Point, MD the PopularWireless AIS receiver has so far identified three ships using GMRS channels while in US waters. Vessels from Norway, Vanuatu, and Singapore are currently on the Foreign Shipping Interference Log. The Norwegian vessel was docked and easily identified with a directional Yagi antenna at some twelve miles distant. The ships from Vanuatu and Singapore passed PopularWireless on the Chesapeake Bay and each was followed with the directional antenna as they sailed by.

The requirements are pretty simple but there is an investment in equipment. The first AIS receiver was an ICOM IC-R8500 receiver. A wide variety of inexpensive scanner receivers can be used as long as the one selected can be modified to take audio directly from the radio discriminator. The receiver was changed that to an SR-161 AIS receiver purchased for $189 from Milltech Marine. The power requirements are very low. An older three-amp power supply was used successfully. The antenna is a VHF antenna with LMR400 cable at about 60 feet above sea level and of course the higher the better. Use good low-loss feed line. The SR-161 serial data from is connected to a computer with Ship Plotter software installed. The switch to serial data from an audio feed to the sound card restored another analog audio input on the computer used for recording ship transmissions on the unauthorized channels also via the ICOM R-8500. The ShipPlotter software is about $30. The payment is processed in Europe so the price is up and down a bit based on the current exchange rate.

Using the ShipPlotter software you can super impose the ship on marine navigation charts or photographs from Google Earth. It is possible to zoom in on a chart to determine where a ship is berthed or moored. A bearing from the chart to your location can be compared to the bearing determined from the directional antenna. ShipPlotter has an active Yahoo Group where the program author and active users provide some support for users of the software. It is even possible for a group of licensees to create their own server and share local data using this product.

Now if you don’t have the cash to purchase an AIS receiver you can purchase the AIS software at Shipplotter.com and watch the feeds from various ports around the United States. There are many ShipPlotter users sending regular data on many US ports that a GMRS licensee could use to help identify Foreign Shipping Interference from a ship illegally using GMRS channels in US waters. Ports in Delaware, Virginia, Texas, California, Washington, and even the Great Lakes are covered. Licensees will also find that many other websites that display AIS ship data on line. Another good one is ShipPlotting.com.

Once the name and owner of the ship is known the GMRS licensee can attempt to contact the ship owner directly by email or mail. My first attempt to contact a ship owner in Singapore was unsuccessful. This did not surprise me given the lack of cooperation from ship’s Captains I have encountered on both coasts. Should the licensee be unsuccessful, a Personal Radio Association GMRS Interference form can be completed (available at PRAWEB.ORG) and sent to the FCC GMRS address in Gettysburg (See Part 95) directly or through the PRA along with the AIS data and the directional methods used to verify the source of the radio signals was the ship in question.

Licensees curious what ships are in or around the area of Southern Maryland can check the AIS Map of the Chesapeake Bay generated at PopularWireless HQ through the courtesy of Shipplotter AIS software and unique scripts written by Shipplotting.com.

At PopularWireless two ICOM-R8500′s and one RadioShack PRO-2006 monitor GMRS, FRS, and international shipping frequencies to assist in the identification of FSI. On any complaint audio files can be recorded and sent to the offending company as evidence. All three scanners are controlled by Spectrum Manager, a ScanStar product. Spectrum Manager is an outstanding product and is very useful for this purpose. A PC audio card conversion to the M-Audio Delta 1010LT purchased from SweetWater will allow recording up to eight computer controlled radio receivers.

(Huntingtown, MD 051107) It was only a matter of time. Late in the evening of 5/11/07 a foreign ship off loading liquid natural gas at the local LNG facility appeared on the input of GMRS repeater KAF9830 located at PopularWireless and PRA HQ, the home of PopWireless Editor and PRA Board of Trustee’s President Doug Smith. The ship was operating on 467.650 MHz, a frequency not authorized for use or even suggested for use in the USA by ships from other countries.

A call to the on-duty security officer at the LNG facility succeeded in the ship moving to 467.600 MHz. That frequency is also not mentioned in any foreign treaty as authorized for use in the United States. Another follow-up call to the security officer moved the ship to 467.675 MHz which caused no end of grief for a GMRS repeater believed to be in Pennsylvania.

This particular night, tropospheric ducting was evident. The transmissions from the ship, using CTCSS encoding, brought up a repeater hundreds of miles away. An unidentified operator of the victim repeater using only a made up three-digit unit number, (output 462.675) repeatedly demanded the identification of the ship’s radio operator who could not hear the enraged repeater operator. Interestingly, this repeater is one that is so far unidentified. The same operators are routinely heard during tropospheric ducting events failing to identify with GMRS call signs. It was odd that one potentially unlicensed operator/intruder was demanding the credentials of another!

The captain of the vessel registered on the Isle of Man and staffed by a UK crew claimed not to have the 457.525 MHz and 457.575 MHz treaty channels required for use in the United States. Our NTIA regulations require visiting ships to use those two 457 MHz frequencies and NOT the GMRS frequencies. “Should the ship indeed not have the required US operating channels – well that opens up a whole new can of worms. What do we do then?” said Doug Smith, owner of the Huntingtown, MD GMRS repeater.

The LNG facility is conducting an inquiry and Riley Hollingsworth was notified by email. The PRA knows the name of the ship and will ask the FCC to write the shipping company upon conclusion of the LNG facility investigation. That facility remained steadfast in its support of the local GMRS community. The PRA and Popular Wireless Magazine are dumbfounded that the promised assistance of the Coast Guard is having no apparent effect on the problem in ANY US port. “We never saw a copy of the completed inter-agency memo. We just understood specific text was prepared for such a memo, to be sent as directed by Kris Montieth Chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau. The FCC decided late in 2006 to no longer make certain enforcement letters and memorandum public,” smith said.

The acronym FSI was coined at PopularWireless Magazine to mean Foreign Shipping Interference or GMRS radio interference from foreign vessels improperly using GMRS repeater input or output channels while in US waters.

(Huntingtown, MD) – Despite continued attention to the problem by the PRA, and even an inter-agency memo from the FCC to the Coast Guard in October 2006 as a result of the PRA pushing back on the FCC, GMRS piracy remains a serious problem on the Chesapeake Bay.

In the first week of May 2007 foreign ships were heard operating on 467.600, 467.675, 467.550, and 467.575. Add this activity up with the crane operator in Dorchester County, MD illegally using 467.725 for crane/tower operations and you have one hell of a mess. Local repeater owner Larry Norris, KAE4617 regularly has vessel audio sneaking through squelch tails on his 462.575 system in Leonardtown, MD.

Only a very small part of the problem remains under control. One local industrial port managed by Dominion Inc. routinely works with local licensees to mitigate interference from ships docked at their facility. Dominion takes facility security and community security very seriously. Local licensees appreciate Dominion’s continued responsiveness. In today’s world getting and keeping the attention of a big company on a local problem is not always easy. Dominion remains a great neighbor.

FCC Special Counsel Riley Hollingsworth, at the direction of Kris Montieth FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief wrote the Coast Guard an inter-agency memo asking Coast Guard’s help in this matter. To date on the Chesapeake Bay between Plum Point and the Port of Baltimore the Coast Guard memo has had no apparent effect. A local source close to this problem said that as of January 2007 the local Coast Guard officer that routinely boards visiting vessels was completely unaware of any FCC communication regarding this issue. That was pointed out to the FCC.

PopularWireless does know that ITU Regulations clearly state that governments have the RIGHT to specify which radio frequencies are used by foreign ships visiting their ports. In the United States our NTIA specifies those frequencies as 457.525 and 457.575 MHz. Those same ITU regulations clearly state that foreign ships may NOT interfere with communications when visiting foreign ports and must identify their transmitters. Not one ship this weekend has identified with a call sign and none of them is doing their part to avoid interference to GMRS repeater operations in Southern Maryland. We do have to be fair to some boat captains. PRA monitoring of the above 457 MHz treaty frequencies does indicate some ships are using the allowed channels. Some ships however use those as well as channels in the GMRS.

Nationwide this has been a problem for twenty plus years. It was first written about at this magazine in the year 2000. (See the previous link for information updated in 2007.) The Personal Radio Association, Inc. still wants to hear from every victim of foreign shipping interference – FSI. In late 2006 a repeater owner in the New Orleans, LA area filed a PRA complaint against a prominent cruise line that used 467.575 in port causing severe interference to his repeater. While we have not seen a copy of the letter, Riley Hollingsworth told the PRA Enforcement Team that a letter was sent to the cruise line. Hollingsworth also said in emails to the PRA that letters were going out to various ports, Pilot associations, and addresses of foreign shipping associations that had already responded to the PRA in 2005.

Obtaining the cooperation of shipping companies, boat captains, and boat radio officers has not been easy. Routinely, attempts to communicate with vessels on the air are ignored. Sometimes the ships change frequencies but often they just change to another GMRS input. In Maryland the company that has had the greatest influence is again Dominion.

It remains a busy weekend on GMRS repeater inputs in Southern Maryland and the activity is not that of GMRS licensees. Along the Chesapeake, pirates rule the waves. Why this piracy problem is a homeland security issue with a private energy company and not with our national government remains a mystery.