What would the radio sound like?

[canucksaram]

To elaborate a bit about my interest in radio signal jamming:

One of the regional powers that I'm using in my game is a group of folks descended from a mix of university students and faculty and Renaissance Faire enthusiasts. In my part of Canada we have three universities clustered close together: the University of Waterloo, the University of Guelph, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier University. A century and half after the Pockyclypse (hat tip to Mad Max) they are now a fascist state run by a hereditary philosopher king and are known as the Kingdom of Gwellip. Since knowledge is power, the ruling elite of the Kingdom try to control news and information.

The Kingdom bullies the Amish, treat with the Six Nations, and have a cool relationship towards the Regiment, a remnant of the pre-apocalypse Canadian government that claims to be the legitimate government of the nation. The toxic ruins of the Golden Horseshoe (the urban sprawl that hugs the western shores of Lake Ontario from Hamilton to far east of Toronto) are a buffer zone of Badges and salvage clans that lie between Gwellip and the Regiment.

For the other parts of the Great Lakes region I'm using setting material from here: http://asmrb.pbworks.com/w/page/1025...0Great%20Lakes

[cosmicfish]

If you want to jam a signal the easy way, you need to produce more power than the signal, at the same frequency, at the receiver. If you are both using standard dipole antennas then the power drops off with 1/r^2 and you just need to find the line where the received power from the jammer and transmitter are equal - on one side of that line the signal gets through, on the other it does not.

For example:

Transmitter, 50 kW
Jammer, 100kW, 5km away

On the line joining the two, the Transmitter wins up to 12.07km away ( on the transmitter's side) and 2.07km away ( on the jammer's side) so as you walked that line, you would be able to hear the transmitter for 12km, then you would hit the transmitter, then 2km later the signal would be gone (still 3km from the jammer).

[canucksaram]

Would this be a feasible radio jamming setup?

Central tower, powered by electricity generated by steam turbine, with a solar panel backup.

Repeaters hidden in trees, weatherproofed to some degree, with their own solar panel power supplies. Perhaps one repeater every five kilometres, in a radial or spiderweb pattern?

Better yet, since the regime in mind has a semi-feudal organization, there are fortifications that can host towers. At a protected hard site like that a tethered balloon could be sent up to then send interfering signals. Hmmm....

[ArmySGT.]

Since it is actively transmitting the jamming can be traced back to the source.

The KFS would simply bomb the jamming transmitter out of existence.

[cosmicfish]

A jamming network would probably work, depending on the power and dispersion of the jammers relative to the receivers. But as ArmySGT. notes, the KFS is not going to ignore the jamming - how are you planning on protecting the jammers?

[mmartin798]

The another consideration in the jamming network is the large amount of power being used to block a narrow band of radio. I am sure some scavengers would start tearing apart the edges of the network just for the working electronics and solar panels. It is also very expensive for the community creating the network. This kind of setup needs the community to be on the scale of KFS or Republic of Texas.

[canucksaram]

I suppose it would be easier for the Bad Guy Nation to send agents out to kill any folks broadcasting "nearby" (triangulation would work to source transmission points, yes?) and then offer bribes and favorable treatment to snitches who dob in folks who use radios to listen to shortwave and other broadcasts from afar.

The Bad Guy Nation is a University faction turned dictatorship, in the vein of Plato's utopia ruled by a philosopher king. They have annexed nearby settlements and beyond their borders proper they dominate proximate neighbors whom they plan to annex, as well. They are far from KFS, being located in southern Ontario, Canada. To their northwest are the Lakers/Shippers, to their immediate south are the Six Nations of the Grand River Amerind faction, to their east and north-east are Badges and Scavenger factions, and soon to encroach are a Snake Eater faction of the prewar Canadian government.

South of the U.S.-Canada border are the ruins of Detroit and the Great Lakes hugging territories of Maxwell's Militia ("the Republic," "Maxwell," "the Republic of Maxwell") and beyond them the Warriors of Krell.