Triangulating Another Base Station

john-o · Mar 14, 2015

Every once and a while someone consistently comes on and makes using a freq impossible. I and other family members will jump to alternate freq's, and even then, the same fool pops in and key's over everyone.

This was a problem, big time, when we had a real bad ice storm and most forms of communication were out - but not our CB's. Our family tried repeatedly to keep in touch with not only us, but some neighbors asked that we contact some of their family as well.

So, is there a way to triangulate this operator's position. I know he's not mobile, he's based somewhere within close range of another family member. There are nine of us in various locations, so triangulation wouldn't be all that trouble - if we knew how.

I'm new to this site and it has give me and others I'm sure a wealth of information.

Thanks in advance.

toastycookies · Mar 14, 2015

sounds like it's time for a fox hunt.

there is a forum dedicated to what you want to do.
Radio Direction Finding Forum - The RadioReference.com Forums

it's called RDF (Radio Direction Finding)

do any of you or your family have a directional antenna?

john-o · Mar 14, 2015

No one in the family has a directional antenna, there all the Solarcon.

However, I'll get one, two, three or how many .... if that's what it takes.

Thank you for the advice on that portion of this web site devoted to RDF. I'll go there.

Should I refer back to this section for a continuation of this subject or transfer my question to that RDF dedication?

toastycookies · Mar 14, 2015

you could click the little triangle with a ! on the first post to report the post and ask a mod to move it to the RDF section.

but i would imagine if a you setup a couple rotatable yagi's on a couple of your base stations in thought out locations it would be easy to pin down the guy. esp since you said there were 9 of you.

they are not cheap, prolly will not find one under $150, but there are plenty of plans out there to make your own if you feel comfortable doing so for much cheaper.

n4yek · Mar 14, 2015

Well you know the general area, you said he was close to one of the family members.
1) Go to that area and remove your antenna from your CB
2) If the signal disappears totally when you remove the antenna, place a metal coat hanger into the antenna jack on the CB, this will allow you to receive fairly strong signals.
3) Then all you do is drive around until the signal gets strong and then take the coat hanger out to see if you can hear him.
4) If you can still hear him, he is Real Close to your current position. Start looking for antennas, if he is running that much power then he will have noticeable antennas.

Not everyone operates CB's so he will be able to be seen.
When you find him, don't approach him, just write down his address and when he starts jamming again, start saying his address over and over again and that should get his attention. Maybe he will stop, if not call the FCC and let them deal with it.

I done this once and when I started saying his address over and over, it immediately stopped.
I just kept repeating.."Rock Hill Rd...Rock Hill Rd...3223 Rock Hill Rd...3223 Rock Hill Rd...
Once he heard me doing that, he knew I was on to him and knew who he was.
People are mean when they remain anonymous, when they are confronted, they tend to cower down like a dog.

LoyalServant · Mar 15, 2015

Oh have I got a good one....
I knew of a guy that would do crap like this... or play music... or noises...
There were always coax pinning parties or coax cutting....
This was probably... 1990 or so.

Nobody ever knocked on the door to just say hi... just got his coax cut or pinned.
He got more and more clever.. primary antenna was super scanner in a tall tree so his feedline used to run from the house to the tree. Secondary antenna was a cushcraft ringo in another tree on the other side of the yard. After getting it cut or pinned a few times the coax went up higher but a pair of hedge trimmers with long handles did the trick.

Then he got some 10BASE5 coax (that yellow stuff) and that made cutting it hard.
It would get cut but the SOB must have had a spool of it because within an hour or two he was back up with a new feedline pulled.
Thing is.. he was in a high location on top of a hill and had the super scanner in a 100+ foot pine tree.
So he got out. He could shut a channel down over a 15 mile radius. When he did talk he claimed to be running a couple KW into those antennas. Possible with the older super scanner variant with the matching stub..

Now when this all started it was hard to find him because running so much power like that meant that you have to search every street around a like 1-2 mile radius. coupled with running the super scanner made his signal somewhat directional so you got that thrown into the mix.
Then, he only did it at night so it was dark and you could not see the antennas. After a few days the house was pinpointed during the day after surveys were done at night to narrow it to like 3 streets.

That's when the pinning and cutting started.
After all that the feedline ended up buried in the ground and up the tree.
To make things more interesting there was not one piece of conduit going up each tree, but several.
These were just decoys.
So someone went to cut the cable and couldn't find it but went to the trees and saw that.
Had to come back with tools like a saw, etc. but putting a saw to the conduit would make noise so they opted for bolt cutters to crunch the conduit and sever the coax inside - or at least short it.

The guys doing this would talk about it and their plans on 27.605 so I got to listen in to what they were doing. This guy was on ch 40 doing his thing.

So they failed to cut his coax that night because pinching the conduit had no effect.
Turns out there was no coax in that conduit.

Here is the kicker... this went on for months.. them trying to find and cut the coax.
Never were able to find it... until one day out of the blue the guy started talking and laughing at them.
Turns out he was moving away and dismantling his gear so he told them how he eluded the coax cutting.

The SOB painstakingly cut a channel in each tree to hide the coax in and then put the pieces back in over the coax. It was not noticed - especially in the dark. It was buried up to the tree fairly shallow then inside of the tree for about 20 feet and the coax painted the color of the tree until beyond where you could see it.

To top it all off... yeah.. this guy was reported to the FCC.
This went on for YEARS and nothing happened.
I am sure CB is a medium they know they cannot police so don't care about.

So.. foxhunting can be fun.
Question is... what will happen when you find him or her?

wtp · Mar 16, 2015

simple

i had a neighbor doing the same thing. so i used a back of the set antenna and a lockable mic in the garage to "shut him down"
he could not hear his friends. so he gave up.
i would only do it when he used foul language, he would bleed onto our neighbors tv, i would not.

john-o, check for a pm.

KD0PEZ · Mar 22, 2015

You could always get you an HT CB, tune to his channel, key it down, hide it by some bushes next to his house. It'll throw a carrier until the battery runs down (unless you have a solar panel on it) but it'll at least get him to hush for a few days.

john-o · Mar 23, 2015

An operator that chimes in from time to time heard my son and I banter about this guy and he and some of his other CB friends manage to do the "fox hunt" thing, and they got him. A couple of days later we heard on the CB an name and address - even the guys phone number, over and over.

I never heard of a "fox hunt", but from what I understand it's a game of sorts that sound like it's fun.

In any event, we don't have the problem(s) anymore, thanks to others.

I've got to say that while driving over the road, I didn't care much for leaving my CB on - too much mean spirited stuff, especially the racial banter - wasn't good. But, the help with directions from locals that had base stations was really appreciated. Especially this guy in and around the Dallas Forth Worth area.

SteveC0625 · Mar 23, 2015

john-o said:
An operator that chimes in from time to time heard my son and I banter about this guy and he and some of his other CB friends manage to do the "fox hunt" thing, and they got him. A couple of days later we heard on the CB an name and address - even the guys phone number, over and over.

I never heard of a "fox hunt", but from what I understand it's a game of sorts that sound like it's fun.

In any event, we don't have the problem(s) anymore, thanks to others.

I've got to say that while driving over the road, I didn't care much for leaving my CB on - too much mean spirited stuff, especially the racial banter - wasn't good. But, the help with directions from locals that had base stations was really appreciated. Especially this guy in and around the Dallas Forth Worth area.

We called them "bunny hunts." You need two things on a car, a signal strength meter on the radio plus the antenna mounted on the center rear of the vehicle. Find an empty parking lot and slowly drive in circles watching the meter. Stop when the signal is strongest. The offender will be on a straight line projected by the center of the nose of the car. Do this from several locations and you'll find your offender on a real hurry.

This works because the antenna hears the strongest signal across the most ground plane. Mount the antenna in the center of the roof and you're left guessing whether the signal is coming from the front or rear. With the antenna in the center of the back of the vehicle you know it's straight out the front.

krokus · Mar 23, 2015

n4yek said:
Well you know the general area, you said he was close to one of the family members.
1) Go to that area and remove your antenna from your CB
2) If the signal disappears totally when you remove the antenna, place a metal coat hanger into the antenna jack on the CB, this will allow you to receive fairly strong signals.
3) Then all you do is drive around until the signal gets strong and then take the coat hanger out to see if you can hear him.
4) If you can still hear him, he is Real Close to your current position. Start looking for antennas, if he is running that much power then he will have noticeable antennas.

Not everyone operates CB's so he will be able to be seen.
When you find him, don't approach him, just write down his address and when he starts jamming again, start saying his address over and over again and that should get his attention. Maybe he will stop, if not call the FCC and let them deal with it.

I done this once and when I started saying his address over and over, it immediately stopped.
I just kept repeating.."Rock Hill Rd...Rock Hill Rd...3223 Rock Hill Rd...3223 Rock Hill Rd...
Once he heard me doing that, he knew I was on to him and knew who he was.
People are mean when they remain anonymous, when they are confronted, they tend to cower down like a dog.

This is very similar to how I found someone that kept interfering with truckers trying to get assistance on ch 19. (The offending jerk would play sound effects, and a looping audio sampler.)

Once I had the source located to one of a few houses, I parked a couple blocks away, and looked for the antenna. I resisted the temptation to cut and pin the coax, and just made note of the vehicle in the driveway, and which windows were lit by the tv.

The recon gave me the ammo to tell the guy he should knock it off, before someone finds him. When he said no one could find him, I told him I already had. Let's just say he doubted me, so I asked him what he was watching on tv. He was unconvinced it was his house, until I asked specific questions about his vehicle. He got deathly quiet after that, and the truckers could talk freely.

After that, anytime I heard the jerk, I would just ask if he still had that vehicle, and he would go away. Eventually, he quit bothering people.

Sent via Tapatalk

SCPD · Mar 26, 2015

Lots of good suggestions on bunny hunts and foxhunting.
If you don't live in a really urban area, I would so some pre-hunt prep work by driving around looking for antennas for a couple weekends.

It's been many, many years since I've played these reindeer games, but I have.
My pranks mainly involved helping out non-CB friends who were getting TVI from their neighbor.
Sometimes I'd lend them a base, or a mobile on a power supply, with a mag mount.
They would set it up inside their house, and key the mike every time their neighbor unkeyed, inhibiting his receive. Since everything at my friends is inside, the CBer had no clue where the QRM was even coming from.

Although I've never done it myself, I've heard of people hooking up a transformer, and putting 9' leads off the secondary in a dipole fashion. Supposed to generate a heck of a racket on the air that wipes out receive.

As mentioned before, pinning works well. I know people that would make an art of pinning the coax, clipping the pin off flush, touch up with a black sharpie. If the person pinned don't run an SWR meter, the receive really don't get attenuated that much, and they will lose their finals.

The most rotten one I ever heard off (I honestly did not participate in this one) was tying a rope around someone's coax, and driving off. The station was in the basement. It pulled everything that was hooked to the coax up to the basement window, and then when the coax broke, everything fell back on the desk.

k8krh · Mar 26, 2015

The guy when found...use the idea of a hand held cb unit and put on transmit, we did that a number of years ago, and they quit, in fact they quit cb altogether.
DOCTOR/795

k3cfc · Mar 30, 2015

LoyalServant said:
Oh have I got a good one....
I knew of a guy that would do crap like this... or play music... or noises...
There were always coax pinning parties or coax cutting....
This was probably... 1990 or so.

Nobody ever knocked on the door to just say hi... just got his coax cut or pinned.
He got more and more clever.. primary antenna was super scanner in a tall tree so his feedline used to run from the house to the tree. Secondary antenna was a cushcraft ringo in another tree on the other side of the yard. After getting it cut or pinned a few times the coax went up higher but a pair of hedge trimmers with long handles did the trick.

Then he got some 10BASE5 coax (that yellow stuff) and that made cutting it hard.
It would get cut but the SOB must have had a spool of it because within an hour or two he was back up with a new feedline pulled.
Thing is.. he was in a high location on top of a hill and had the super scanner in a 100+ foot pine tree.
So he got out. He could shut a channel down over a 15 mile radius. When he did talk he claimed to be running a couple KW into those antennas. Possible with the older super scanner variant with the matching stub..

Now when this all started it was hard to find him because running so much power like that meant that you have to search every street around a like 1-2 mile radius. coupled with running the super scanner made his signal somewhat directional so you got that thrown into the mix.
Then, he only did it at night so it was dark and you could not see the antennas. After a few days the house was pinpointed during the day after surveys were done at night to narrow it to like 3 streets.

That's when the pinning and cutting started.
After all that the feedline ended up buried in the ground and up the tree.
To make things more interesting there was not one piece of conduit going up each tree, but several.
These were just decoys.
So someone went to cut the cable and couldn't find it but went to the trees and saw that.
Had to come back with tools like a saw, etc. but putting a saw to the conduit would make noise so they opted for bolt cutters to crunch the conduit and sever the coax inside - or at least short it.

The guys doing this would talk about it and their plans on 27.605 so I got to listen in to what they were doing. This guy was on ch 40 doing his thing.

So they failed to cut his coax that night because pinching the conduit had no effect.
Turns out there was no coax in that conduit.

Here is the kicker... this went on for months.. them trying to find and cut the coax.
Never were able to find it... until one day out of the blue the guy started talking and laughing at them.
Turns out he was moving away and dismantling his gear so he told them how he eluded the coax cutting.

The SOB painstakingly cut a channel in each tree to hide the coax in and then put the pieces back in over the coax. It was not noticed - especially in the dark. It was buried up to the tree fairly shallow then inside of the tree for about 20 feet and the coax painted the color of the tree until beyond where you could see it.

To top it all off... yeah.. this guy was reported to the FCC.
This went on for YEARS and nothing happened.
I am sure CB is a medium they know they cannot police so don't care about.

So.. foxhunting can be fun.
Question is... what will happen when you find him or her?

A bow saw would make short work of that tree. cut a wedge on the house side of the tree and cut a downward angle on the other side. don't forget to yell timber!

KC2GIU · Mar 8, 2016

SteveC0625 said:
We called them "bunny hunts." You need two things on a car, a signal strength meter on the radio plus the antenna mounted on the center rear of the vehicle. Find an empty parking lot and slowly drive in circles watching the meter. Stop when the signal is strongest. The offender will be on a straight line projected by the center of the nose of the car. Do this from several locations and you'll find your offender on a real hurry.

This works because the antenna hears the strongest signal across the most ground plane. Mount the antenna in the center of the roof and you're left guessing whether the signal is coming from the front or rear. With the antenna in the center of the back of the vehicle you know it's straight out the front.

One other item to help is a GPS. So, if you only have one vehicle, you can map out the direction points.
This helps in areas that are hilly or in the city.

I do like what was mentioned about removing the coax to tell if the offender was very close.

Love this recon game by finding the problem.

.

DJ11DLN · Mar 8, 2016

This thread brings back memories, getting some good laughs here. I've been out of CB since the early '80s, so any possible statute of limitations should have run out, but...

Some guys I used to know would go and fox hunt such anti-social people when they'd get to be enough of a pain in the backside and, under the auspices of doing a public service, dump a pickup load of cow manure in their driveways, repeatedly, until they learned some manners. I will admit to advising that the fecal matter not be placed in the mailbox because it would have become a Federal matter, and there was no reason to put the poor mail carrier though that...he/she hadn't done anything. That was okay; the offending CB'er might use the first load for his garden, but by the time the fifth or sixth had arrived, he was usually ready to see the light.

And that's all I'm gonna say about that!

BBB007 · Mar 17, 2016

I had a good belly laugh when one of the posters said "call the FCC" Now that's funny no matter who you are.

The FCC would only respond if he interfered with the public safety bands. Heck, the FCC just lost a bunch of field offices due to budget cuts. Not even HAMs can get them to respond to CB operators or even other HAMs causing interference. Why people even suggest that anymore or threaten that the FCC will "Getcha" is beyond me. Don't worry, be happy. Its a good time to be in the radio hobby.

There are Doppler RF locating devices for other frequencies, but none for 11 meters that I have seen. I would think the size of the antenna array required for 11 meters would make a mobile Doppler unit impractical.

An HT or handheld CB radio with a rubber ducky antenna in a vehicle is very useful after you narrow down the base station location to a mile or so.

I do not suggest at all that anyone trespass on private property for 9, 357, 380 and/or 44 reasons (if you know what I mean)

prcguy · Mar 17, 2016

You can make a small directional loop cheap and easy for the CB range with some 1/4" flexable copper tubing, some coax and a wood handle. The loop will be about a foot in diameter and has a good null. There are plenty of plans on the Internet.

Just get a compass bearing from somewhere you can receive the problem, then drive to another spot and take a reading and so on. At some point you will have several headings that converge on a map and you can then drive the neighborhood to find the specific house with further sniffing.
prcguy

TheSpaceMann · Mar 17, 2016

They used to sell direction finding loops for 11 meters at Radio Shack and Lafayette Radio! Maybe you can find an old one used online!!

pinballwiz86 · Mar 17, 2016

n4yek said:
I done this once and when I started saying his address over and over, it immediately stopped.
I just kept repeating.."Rock Hill Rd...Rock Hill Rd...3223 Rock Hill Rd...3223 Rock Hill Rd...
Once he heard me doing that, he knew I was on to him and knew who he was.

HAHA! This is one of the funniest radio happenings I've ever heard!!

Rock Hill Rd! 3223 Rock Hill Rd!

Gold. Good job man.

OP, I recommend you contact your local amateur radio club (ham radio). They would LOVE to do a real fox hunt. Plus, they can contact the FCC for you.

Triangulating Another Base Station

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