Thursday night I heard my first troll on a repeater at 145.390. Two guys were discussing a new magnetic loop antenna one had built and the troll periodically broke in. He was doing an imitation of somebody with Downs.

"I put a hundred watts through it and it didn't arc, but it set off my home alarm system."

"YAY! I HAVE THE FOUR WATTS ON MY BAOFENG!"

"You're lucky it didn't start your microwave and burn your popcorn."

"MY RUBBER DUCKY BAOFENG IS THE BEST! YAY!"

"I managed to get a QSO going in Connecticut after I rotated-"

"THIS REPEATER IS BORING! YOU GUYS ARE POOPYHEADS!"

"-I started looking at servos and gear sets to get remote fine adjustment-"

"BAOFENG IS BETTER THAN POFUNG! YAY!"

It went on like that on and off for about twenty minutes. The antenna guys completely ignored him, which is probably the best policy. I learned a bit about magnetic loop antennas and I laughed at the troll.

it won,t be the last time hearing it on uhf-vhf....

I was listening to a fairly active repeater one evening when a couple of kids must have grabbed a hold of daddy's radio and got on and started hollering gibberish in between transmissions.  There was a control op on at the time.  

Kids: Blahblahblahblahblah
Control OP: OK, that's it.  I'm not putting up with this tonight.  *DTMF tones*
Repeater: * P L ON*

The normal conversations continued, the control op quite proud of himself for quelling the interference when all of a sudden the kids interjected with the gibberish.  Seems like daddy had the PL tone programmed in already... the control op sheepishly signed shortly thereafter

A lot of trolls with Baofengs showing up recently. Had a 13 year old kid with a bootleg call on one of the wide area N. Georgia repeaters two weeks ago.

We have another one who live 1/4 mile from our repeater who will key over people.

Fox hunt!

Get hold of the antenna guys and congratulate them on handling it properly.

I bet both of them had to pass a Morse Code test to get licensed.

The older guys know how to ignore and talk around a troll.

Younger guys seem to be the ones who take the bait.

For The Record -

I have come to dislike VHF and local repeaters.

At times it seems like watching reruns of a bad I Love Lucy episode over and over and over and over again.

Then there are the drama queens ...... " woe is me, I stubbed my toe .... blah blah blah "

Would not be so bad, but we hear about that fucking toe 5 times a day, every day for a long long time.

       

If you focus only on one line, you miss the point of the entire thought.

That's why taking things out of context is a bad thing!

Seems like there was a rash of siren noises on the local repeater after Christmas. Everybody with a new Baofeng had to push the little red button on top.

Not sure what it is about those Baofengs, we have a couple of club members who have them but about a month after getting them they seem to be using something else.

Yaesu is picking up in popularity among some of the Baofeng owners around here, but they are migrating on to a Yaesu Fusion digital repeater.

I'm guessing he's one of the younger guys.  

I suspect the big 3 benefit from the Cheap Chinese Radios (CCR). It seems like the CCR's should have a serious competitive advantage due to cost, but I suspect they get folks hooked on the hobby, then once the radio fails they buy a "real" radio. These are the folks who wouldn't get into the hobby otherwise.

Hams who've been licensed a while and have some big-name gear are probably less likely to get a CCR.

I know a couple of 'old timers' who have had one or the other of the CCR's in their hands and the problem with the CCR's is receiver performance.

They hear well, too well, too fucking well.

In larger metro areas they hear the frequency you are on and all the ones around that you are not on.

Out in the boonies they might be OK ..... but not in town.

The 'old timers' who had them bought them sole are 'throw away' radios, that is to say if they were on their boat and dropped it overboard they would not go after it.

Mounted over the helm of their boat was a mobile rig from one of the big three or four .... if you count the marine band rig manufacturers.

Thats how we got the shithead keying over people.

The bootlegger actually used his own name and location and gave us enough info to look him up on Facebook. That one wasn't being a shithead, handled that one by showing up at his house and handing him a study manual.

Your point is well taken BUT....

Some of these guys are handicapped and the repeater is all they have. I used to be annoyed with the local repeater and s handful of the guys on it until I mentioned it to another ham and he pointed it out to me.

These days I let a lot of it slide and occasionally put it to good use. If I need to know something I'll just ask someone to look something up for me. It's a win/win. I get what I need and they get something useful to do. One guy gave me directions to some place I just couldn't seem to find even with a GPS.

This, these are the station that will end up relaying your emergency traffic.

You've never been to sea, have you? That shit never stops in the Med, and from what I understand, WestPac.

Phillipino Monkey!

Sounds like you found "the bananna" on N3KZ's repeater system.

I have a canoe, but I suspect that's not the same.

Yeah, now that you bring it up, bananas WERE mentioned.

Yeah. There is a guy on the repeaters here who got hit by a car on his motorcycle 30 odd years ago. He is severely handicapped and often forgets talking to you yesterday. 5 years now and he still calls me David. My name isn't even close. He gets the call right and he corrects himself if he is on QRZ at the same time. Still forgets my name and tells me at least once a month he is glad to meet me. I had just said "hi, Garry with two R's." When he came back with his call.

I used to correct him. I don't anymore. It is all he has, he lost his mobility and quite a bit of his cognitive skills in that wreck. There was a time when I would avoid him as he is very repetitive. Once I met him at a Club event I was ashamed of myself.

I make it a point to QSO with him at least once a week if I'm out driving around.

I get tired of hearing the same damn mantra.  

It's not the gear.
Its not if the person learned code.
It has nothing to do with if they had a fraking elmer.
It has nothing to do with how long they have been licensed.

It's called personal responsibility.  

Shit heads will be shit heads no matter what.  Yes, it is easier entry now but I can point to just as many older, know code, fancy gear owning operators that are just as bad or worse on the air.

  Lead by example and quit driving the new folks away that want help and to do what is right.  Help identify the bad operators so that corrective action can be taken.

[/soapbox]

It's like saying someone that owns a Hi-Point is ruining the shooting hobby because its not a 1911.  

Yeah, you guys get it.
I got into a discussion with a couple guys at my local club who were of the mindset that Echolink and/or IRLP "were not ham radio" because it involved transmission over the internet and wasn't all RF. I pointed out to them that I regularly talked to a guy in the UK who was in a nursing home. He was a long time ham and because of his health problems had sadly now been confined to a nursing home. Thanks to internet linked repeaters he is still able to enjoy the hobby and work people outside of his immediate area thanks to internet linked repeaters.
This is a little bit different than what you are talking about, but it's the same thought process: at some point we all get old and are no longer able to do the things we once did. In some cases these guys are alone. Because of their physical condition they don't get out and do much, so they don't have all kinds of exciting/interesting things to talk about. Instead of making fun of them behind their backs we should be brightening up their day. Even though they might not be doing anything exciting, they might enjoy hearing about the things you are doing.

I attended a seminar at a hamfest a few years ago when Riley Hollingsworth was retiring as Special Counsel for the FCC's Spectrum Enforcement Division.
Something he said was an eye opener to me. He said that the vast majority of major enforcement actions he took against hams involved long time hams and NOT new hams. I had never thought about that, but after hearing that I started paying attention to who was being fined.

But, I understand what the previous poster was saying: experienced operators ignore trolls and don't take the bait. Simply ignoring the troll usually makes him lose interest and then move on. The second you acknowledge them, there is no stopping them.
If you encounter a troll on ham radio, whether it be something like described above, or somebody tuning up on the freq. just ignore them. This is especially true with people tuning up on freq. This is the 21st century, almost all of us have filtering on our rigs. If you use it properly, you won't even know they are there.  The one exception to this is when someone starts calling CQ on top of you. This is often just a mistake on the other guy's part. He didn't listen before he transmitted. He didn't ask if the frequency was in use. So in this case, it usually works just to politely tell them that the frequency is in use. Nine times out of ten they will apologize and move on: they wern't intentionally trying to be a troll.

The problem with a fox hunt is that the N3KZ repeater system covers most of PA, NJ, and parts of northern MD. And he only operates at certain times of the day, which changes with the school schedule.