Do I have a legit concern?

Id figure id post here and gather your opinions first before I email a local mobile pager company over a concern of some pretty severe spurs of interference I have been receiving lately. Ive never really had any problems with this company's pager system before until probably the start of the summer. Its starting to bleed through my scanner feed 24/7 now, I used to have an outdoor antenna but i have now put on a rubber duck to try to reduce the sensitivity. It also opens up my Minitor pager at my house and through town, as well as most of my 2m equipment that isnt PL'ed.

If I were, does it look like I have a legitimate complaint? I also live about the same distance from a NOAA station at 1kw and never had a problem with interference, this is where my concern comes from. I don't want to look like the rear end of a horse, just want to be courteous to this company. It seems like this is a growing issue, and if there is something wrong on their end, its taken care of.

I have attached some images from my SDR to show you the pager signal vs the noise floor. Two specific images are of one near the local EMS dispatch frequency of 154.430 and another of the pager spur near my company's AVL frequency. There are many more spurs, I just included two examples.

This pager is running at 500w about 10 miles from my home. The sdr was set at 0db gain through a diamond x50 antenna.

Sorry, posed in HF/MW/LW thread, can mod please move, THX

The SNR on the paging signal is huge. The strong signal / close proximity to you coupled with the fact that you are using an SDR receiver pretty much means that you can expect things like that to happen.

I would not recommend contacting anyone. A scanner listener has no rights to having their receiver be free from interference from anyone. There is unlikely any issue with paging system.

Your'e likely going to need to get a filter to block the paging band if you like to monitor VHF a lot and your scanner frontend is getting trashed by the strong paging signal.

Mike

The SDR was just to show the spurs. Its interfering with my Amateur radio equipment as well as bleading through my company's AVL frequency. Most of my equipment is commercial gear, not amateur grade. I understand scanners are prone to noise but this is more than interrupting me listening to a scanner.

KC3AWP said:

The SDR was just to show the spurs. Its interfering with my Amateur radio equipment as well as bleading through my company's AVL frequency. I understand scanners are prone to noise but this is more than interrupting me listening to a scanner.

Click to expand...

Well, you may have a leg to stand on then. I mean there is definitely a legitimate gripe if ifs affecting other services. Still, that signal is huge. On the very best of days I'd expect that signal to interfere with SDR activities on an RTL dongle.

Mike

You can always contact the paging company. The response could vary from no response, a "don't care" response or their engineer could be glad you told them.
There is no legal proof on you just to contact them...if you were contacting the FCC with a formal complaint, I would suggest trying to get some captures from a professional spectrum analyzer first.
Is your company's AVL properly licensed? Is the paging signal causing interference to it? If so, that is the strongest case.

Well as far as my company AVL, yes we are licensed legal, but we are in the process off upgrading to cellular. By the time Id write the email, we probably will have 99% upgraded so I would be hesitate to make that my point, plus I wouldn't want to write a complaint on my company's behalf, just simply stating the problem. But yes, that would be my first step to email them. Id like the same courtesy of being told my equipment is out of spec instead of the FCC mailing me a fix it letter. Just wanted to make sure I had a valid concern.

For the SDR or scanner you can always get a Par intermod scanner filter for the 152 Mhz paging band. they work great! See the VHFSYM152HT specs and plot

PAR Electronics | Filters for the commercial 2 way market, MATV, FM broadcast, laboratory, marine industry, amateur radio, scanner and short wave listening enthusiasts