What’s stopping another person/company from transmitting on the same radio frequency as an established radio channel?
In: Technology
A lot of good answers here about nothing really physically stopping you, and it’s more about enforcement, but I have a short story about how that enforcement can work:
I worked for an aircraft radio manufacturer. Part of our testing involved making sure that the emergency channels at 121.5 and 243 MHz worked correctly.
This involved actually transmitting at those frequencies in the lab with attenuators so it didn’t go far, but could be detected with lab equipment. The lab also had connections to proper antennas on the building for testing long range communication.
A new guy once accidentally connected to the outdoor antenna, and started testing the emergency frequencies. Since he was connected to the outdoor antenna, his equipment wasn’t detecting anything so he left the radio on while trying to troubleshoot.
About 5 min after he started, the lab manager comes in and starts shouting “TURN OFF ALL RADIOS, NOW”. He had gotten a call about an emergency transponder that wasn’t responding and was coming from our area.
That’s how fast the FAA heard and responded to the emergency transmission.
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