Tag Archives: OTHR QRM

Strange Interference Near 13860 kHz: Mario Tracks It to Kaliningrad

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mario, who writes:

Dear Thomas,

It has been about two or three days since it was impossible for me to hear Radio Romania Int in Spanish (1900 UTC) from my home, at Zaragoza.

A strange interference appeared close to my favourite SW station (13860). A little bit on the left of the waterfall an strange emission appeared jamming.

After some research in your past entries I found that it could be a radar over the horizon.

Using the TDoA function of the kiwisdr environment, I found the following:

If it worked properly, the emission source could come from Kaliningrad.

According to old news, another 29B6 facility has been planned to be built in Kaliningrad.

Mario then sent the following update:

Well, it seems that the mystery has been resolved.

I am pretty sure that is a new 29B6:

It can be see on some satellite imagery services (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/, at the coordinates of the previous link).

It is not visible on Google satellite images or Bing maps.I hope they change their frequency shortly because they are messing my SW listening at radio Romania Intl in Spanish.

Best regards.

Contayner Over-The-Horizon Radar site polluting the HF spectrum

OTH radar Contayner on 7062 and 7103 kHz on 21 Oct. at 1847 UTC (Source: IARU Region 1 Newsletter)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Evans, who writes:

The news from IARU Region 1 observer reports is all over the radio internet (including news sites and other blogs), but the extent of this [Russian] OTHR is grim. [Click here to read a recent ARRL News post.]

It is also entering service on a full-time basis, along with, potentially, a similar Chinese system.

Yes, it has been in testing for many years but is approaching multiple site use, soon. As the sunspot cycle comes back they may prove to be very limiting.

The antenna picture (for the transmit site) is impressive:
https://qrznow.com/russian-oth-radar-now-reported-to-be-everywhere/

(although I think that is of the old Woodpecker site, the Google Maps street view image looks somewhat different, see below).

However, it’s not so huge that it really stands out. It can be seen here:

in satellite view and can even be seen in street view here:

Note that the magic number in the phased arrays seems to be 9.

Rather worrying is that the UK continues to run, over many years now, OTHR from sovereign bases (ZC4) in Cyprus rather obviously aimed at use in Syria and Libya for use with the RAF and for Russian air space. It too can be seen on the salt marshes in the south of the island. As an active system it seems to be rather more cloaked than the Russian system, although there are some 360 degree images in Google Maps that show the towers. This was extremely annoying on the bands when the last solar cycle was near maximum from Bermuda because it was right in the main lobe when a Yagi was pointed towards Europe and was very loud. It was considerably narrower than the Russian system but occupied a solid chunk of band.

Paul, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have seen chatter about the QRM this particular Russian OTH Radar site has created, but it seems other countries will soon be joining the OTHR QRM scene as well.


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