CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Police say a 55-year-old Iowa man interfered with railroad communications by yelling racial slurs and obscenities over a radio channel used by Union Pacific. Police accuse Randy W. Thompson of Cedar Rapids with threatenin…
When you can buy a radio on-line for $25, which will transmit on those frequencies, this is bound to happen…
On the other hand, this guy does sound a little unbalanced…
a coupler short of a knuckle
I think backwards you have that.
Thus spaketh yoda. Did he not?
Seems Mr. Thompson[D)] would fall in the group under:
" The ignorant might be trainable, but Stupid is forever?"[:-^]
Observant, you are.
But seriously, is there no FCC presence in this business? Time was, they would get out themselves and deal with the situation, but I guess the enforcement bureau has withered over the years. I don’t even know if the Western Enforcement unit is still patrolling the broadcast bands at all, whereas up to about 30 years ago, a broadcast station could count on an inspection every year or three and random measurements of radiated signals. Of course, that was when stations had to have a licensed operator on duty (third or first phone, depending on station facilities) and maintain detailed technical logs.
I love it! I must add that to my repartee.
As Ron White so aptly put it: “You cain’t fix stupid.”
An unknown wise nurse has be quoted as saying: “You can’t fix stupid; but you can sedate it.”
Chuck: FCC and FRA will have their mobile units out looking for this knucklehead. Railroad radios and radio rules are monitored all the time by FRA and FCC.
Good to hear. I used to follow FCC enforcement actions while and after working in the broadcast industry and met the western team a couple of times and they were an interesting group. We had a handful of wildcat FM operations in our area that got shut down with some substantial forfeitures imposed a few years ago. I suspect that narrowbanding the RR channels has increased the scrutiny for a while.
Just occured to me that a civilian law enforcement HARM projectile could be effective in solving this kind of problem. Maybe a product suggestion for the ACME corporation?
ACME already has a super-genius solution. It’s a long-loiter drone equipped with a tunable EMP generator. They are working on integrating their drone-based crossing-protection security with it so it can be launched semi-autonomously from locomotives.
I wouldn’t mind having one of those for some of the teeth-rattling sound system-equipped vehicles that get too close…[}:)]
he ACME that Wile E. Coyote uses? I thought they got bought out by Amazon?
You think that is bad my drivers that run thru OKC all the time report there is some idiot that jumps on the CB and goes I aint wearing any painties all the time at all hours of the night. Or he’ll hit his noise toy in his radio and it does a Tarzan scream for 30 seconds at a time. The problem is according to the drivers the sucker has such a powerful radio he can overpower anyone that tries to talk over him.
Once upon a time - back in the 60’s and early 70’s before railroad radio was commonplace on many carriers - Crews would use the personal CB Radios for end to end communications…it wasn’t uncommon to see ‘jumper cables’ from a locomotives battery box going to the locomotive cab to support the Engineer’s radio. With the coming of railroad FM radios, CB’s left the railroad.
Had that occurred during the 70’s, when I was there, he’d have been found and may well have discovered a pin in his coax. No doubt he’s running more than the regulation five watts, so the results would have been spectacular…
Some people just have to make you-know-whats of themselves, then feign ignorance when confronted.
He can be found. More than one CB community has done so. He just thinks he’s immune.
Of course, back in the 70’s there was some honor among the thieves (those who used handles instead of call signs). I’m not sure that’s the case any more.
That happened in the fire service as well. Many fire departments relied on “fire phones” to receive calls, and had no radios. CB’s gave them a certain amount of communication capability.
One downfall of Class D CBs was that they were (and still are) in the 11 meter band, which is very vulnerable to skip. When I was active in the genre, there were days when you could talk half way across the country, but not across town.
Not familiar with the HARM projectile, but I would think a drone equipped with a Hellfire missile would be pretty effective. Has worked on a bunch of terrorists. [}:)]