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/.