Bleed over??

[Gnarlykaw]

for like the last month, we have had some folk "bleeding over" into our repeater.  The kicker that I have yet to be able to grasp is the fact that our repeater is in St louis, and they are in Indiana!  I have done an ID on their call signs, and that panned out, and their rag chew also puts them in Indiana.  I even got their trans PLtone, and tried to hit them back but no luck.  Ive heard this is called "skip" but every day???

[Raybestos]

Is it possible that you are getting bled on by a repeater more close to yours and that the people in Indiana you hear are on a linked system that a more local to your repeater also is on?

[WRQI663]

Skip on UHF??

[Raybestos]

23 minutes ago, WRQI663 said:

Skip on UHF??

It can and does happen, but usually not very often.  It certainly is not likely that it would be recurring for around a month.

A friend worked in a VZW call center about 20-25 years ago.  He told me that periodically customers would call from South Carolina, complaining that they were billed for roaming and long distance when they were talking to someone inside of their local calling area.  He said the bill, and their database showed the call as having been made on a tower in New York state.  He said his Customer Svc representative was arguing with a customer about this.  He told her he would handle the call.  He explained to the rep and the customer what happened.  The call log showed the customer making or receiving calls within thirty minutes before and after the disputed call.  They were on local towers in South Carolina.  The disputed call had obviously hit a weird condition, "band opening", or "skip", which allowed the pocket-sized phone to hit a tower in New York state, incurring the roaming and long distance charges.  There was no way the customer could have travelled from SC to NY, and back to SC in such a short time frame.  He issued credits and apologies to the customer.

He said they had a handful of such incidents over about a two year period of time.  If that can happen at 800 MHz, it can happen at 462 MHz.

[WRQI663]

The only skip I can think of is either moon bounce or multipathing

[nokones]

Could be "knife edge diffraction"

[Raybestos]

12 minutes ago, WRQI663 said:

The only skip I can think of is either moon bounce or multipathing

Weird things do happen.  Please see my edit to my above post.  In the mid 1990's, I worked at a police department that operated on 460 MHz.  One night, we had one of those weird and rare, "pea soup" fogs that was very RF friendly.  For about 2-3 hours, another department was coming in loud and clear.  It used the same PL as our department as it broke through on our PL decoders on our ht's and mobiles.  We could hear their dispatch and some of the cars coming through our repeater.  Likewise, some of our cars and ht's would key up their repeater and make strong interference where our repeater just barely came over it.  I wanted badly to ask them where they were but knew I would probably get a butt chewing from one of the Sergeants or Lieutenants given that our whole city was dispatched on that channel and was very busy.  We never heard that department before or after that, so it must have been at some distance.  We regularly heard other departments 100 or so miles away, if we turned off our PL decoders.

[SteveShannon]

The traditional use of the word “skip” applies to hf radio signals bouncing off the ionosphere. UHF doesn’t do that, but it does propagate long distances sometimes when there’s a temperature inversion which causes tropospheric propagation, also called tropospheric ducting. 

[kidphc]

Yup sounds like tropopheric ducting. Vhf and uhf pass through the ionic sphere where hf bounces off it (skip). Yes, I know 11m is technically also vhf, but it's low band vhf.

Tropo occurs a lot more in the spring and fall. But can occur early and late summer. Not uncommon to get NY and parts of NC in the fc area when it occurs. Our tropo tunnels are more n/s directions due to the mountains and ocean.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[WRYZ926]

We get tropospheric ducting on our 2m, 70cm, and GMRS repeaters at times. It happens more on the 2m repeater than it does with the other two repeaters. Conditions were just right a couple of weeks ago that we were getting traffic from a repeater in Michigan. They actually got upset at us and told us we need to change our repeater setting. We also hear a 2m repeater from Kansas and another from Illinois at times too. 

All of our repeater antennas are on a local radio station tower. The 2m and 70cm antennas are at 900 feet above ground while the GMRS repeaters are at 400 feet. Our repeaters are located in central Missouri.

While tropospheric ducting happens more on VHF, it can and does occasionally happen on UHF. 

[amaff]

Are you sure it's not a linked repeater system? That seems like far and away the simplest answer here. What channel are you hearing them on?
You could hear them on, say simplex Ch20, but if you were trying to talk back on that frequency, even with the correct PL, you won't reach them if you're not going through the repeater close to you.

[UncleYoda]

4 hours ago, kidphc said:

Yes, I know 11m is technically also vhf, but it's low band vhf.

11 and 10 are HF.

[kidphc]

11 and 10 are HF.

Sorry thinking 6m

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[LeoG]

I'm receiving a signal from the 575 LI East End repeater in Northern CT when I clearly should not be able to receive or hit this repeater, which I can.  I've noticed the low level signal on my radio which is set to a much more local repeater.  I figured out what the output PL tone was to isolate it and listened in.  Figured out the PL input and was able to hit it.   Right through a mountain, unless their antenna is 590 meters above ground level.  Not sure if this is something I can receive/hit regularly or not.