Date: March 2023
Amount: $13,783

The Platinum Coast Amateur Radio Society (PCARS) is a club in Melbourne, FL for local amateur radio operators. Due to proliferation of solar-powered systems, increased LEDs throughout the community, and stressed power line equipment due to being located in the “Lightning Capital of the World”, local amateur radio operators experience significant RF interference (RFI) and pollution, thus reducing radio operations. Though PCARS has an RFI mitigation team that has already had some success in locating sources of interference, they have so far been limited to using off-the-shelf receivers and homemade antennas which cannot always effectively detect the source of RFI, nor adequately document it.

This grant will provide upgraded equipment that will allow PCARS to effectively locate and mitigate RFI, as well as provide adequate data to power companies and solar power providers. As a result, this will increase the rate in which interference is detected and resolved, improving the overall usability of the spectrum that is granted to licensed amateur radio operators.

Learn more at https://pcars.org/wp/rfi/.

Update

This grant equipped the Platinum Coast Amateur Radio Society’s RFI mitigation team with professional-grade interference detection and direction-finding equipment. PCARS, an ARRL Special Service Club with over 300 members operating under callsign W4MLB in Melbourne, Florida, had been conducting RFI investigations on the Space Coast using homemade antennas and personally owned receivers. The grant funded a significant upgrade to the team’s capabilities, led by a committee with deep RF engineering credentials drawn from the area’s aerospace workforce, including current and former engineers from L3Harris and Rockwell-Collins.

The principal equipment purchased included a Radar Engineers RE243 ultrasonic/RF receiver, the industry-standard instrument for power line noise location used by utilities nationwide, and a National RF HFDF Vector Gun handheld direction-finding antenna system covering 1.8 to 55 MHz. The team has investigated ten interference complaints using the new equipment, positively locating seven sources. Five of these were resolved by Florida Power and Light; two remain pending. The team made two presentations at Orlando HamCation, each drawing 35 to 40 attendees, including an FCC field engineer. Other amateur radio clubs have contacted the team for assistance in forming their own RFI committees, including a request from Minnesota.