Consultation and request for help

[CE2EK Marco Beltrami]

Dear friends, I need to raise a problem and make a request specifically for aprs.fi support... Dear support team, my name is Marco Beltrami Woelkar, a Chilean amateur radio operator with over 42 years of experience and the call sign XQ2EK. I am a founding member of the APRSCHILE group in 2004. I would like to request, if possible, that you filter a station on the aprs.fi network that has been generating an excessive number of packets in the city of Santiago, Chile for several days. We do not know the intentions of this station, but it uses a fictitious or nonexistent call sign and identifies a company that operates in Chile. Its beacons appear approximately every 10 to 15 seconds, causing extremely annoying congestion on our high-altitude digipeter. I request that you take this action, hoping that in this way, whoever is responsible will desist from their actions upon noticing that they no longer appear on your aprs.fi server. I sincerely regret having to resort to such an unpleasant measure, but we have tried to contact the person responsible for this action without receiving any positive response.

Sincerely, and awaiting your reply, I remain,

Marco Beltrami Woelkar
XQ2EK

[Joni Kähärä]

Hello,

I'm just an end-user of this service like yourself, but if this offender is jamming your local APRS channel over there, then would it make sense to first try to (somehow, tbd) block the offender's callsign in the local digipeaters' configurations? This should narrow their blast radius even if the many igates don't have such blocking in place.

Or if that's technically not possible, fox hunt their location and try to arrange an intervention. Contacting local authorities could also work, as this sounds like operating on amateur bands without a license or/and against regulations.

As far as I can tell, it would be relatively difficult (or impossible) for aprs.fi to manage a "blocklist". To make it work in a fair and reliable way would require considerable resources, because the blocklist maintainer would need to be sure that a request should be accepted as genuine, honest, and not based on a misundertanding. Or if the requests were just accepted blindly, then consider for example a situation where this offender requested that _your_ callsign be blocked. My two eurocents.

    Joni OH2EWL

[L.C. Kimball]

Blocking them at the digipeater and the Igates is really the only solution.  Once the packet makes it into the APRS-IS stream, there are a dozen public sites where it will show up, and APRSFI is only one of them. 

It would help to know if this was on LORA (Seems like you have a fairly extensive network), or two meters, and maybe some call signs of the digipeaters, or abusive user. 

If it's on 2m and using something like a Kantronics TNC, you could put the offending call sign in the bud list.  The Microsat WX3in1 devices also have an exclude list.  
If you filter it so it doesn't make it to the APRS IS, the user is likely to adjust their settings, and you are in a game of continuous catch up, whack a mole.

Sounds like blocking them at the High Altitude site would be the first step. 

Regards
Chuck   n0nhj
Glenwood Springs, CO  US

sunnuntai 24. toukokuuta 2026 klo 13.52.40 UTC+3 CE2EK Marco Beltrami kirjoitti:

Dear friends, I need to raise a problem and make a request specifically for aprs.fi support.. Dear support team, my name is Marco Beltrami Woelkar, a Chilean amateur radio operator with over 42 years of experience and the call sign XQ2EK. I am a founding member of the APRSCHILE group in 2004. I would like to request, if possible, that you filter a station on the aprs.fi network that has been generating an excessive number of packets in the city of Santiago, Chile for several days. We do not know the intentions of this station, but it uses a fictitious or nonexistent call sign and identifies a company that operates in Chile. Its beacons appear approximately every 10 to 15 seconds, causing extremely annoying congestion on our high-altitude digipeter. I request that you take this action, hoping that in this way, whoever is responsible will desist from their actions upon noticing that they no longer appear on your aprs.fi server. I sincerely regret having to resort to such an unpleasant measure, but we have tried to contact the person responsible for this action without receiving any positive response.

Sincerely, and awaiting your reply, I remain,

Marco Beltrami Woelkar
XQ2EK

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[Scott Sheppard]

Hi 

Is the offending station using a consistent call sign? 

Less helpful is the radio “type” as others may use the same radio.

Perhaps (see the direwolf help sites) might be a filter based on how often someone beacons. Again less helpful as other nations use teh same frequency but if you block all stations that beacon more than say 60 seconds or 600 seconds that might help but the noise on the air will not stop. 

So you can stop them at a I gate or digipeater but I do not see any other method to get them off the air except a FOX hunt or government  action.

For your digipeater / I-gate are you using Direwolf or Grey Wolf? I think there are commands you can add to the *.conf files (several files may be in use to filter this call sign). 

Example filter 

# RF->RF local filter

# Don't digipeat ourself (two radio scenario) or abusive stations on RF

FILTER 0 0 ! d/KJ4ZZB-2 & ! b/KJ4ZZB-2

# Internet->RF local filter

# Just gate message-type packets that aren't group bulletins or weather-type packet from my wx station

FILTER IG 0 ( t/m & ! g/BLN* ) 

This is a radon packet from teh direwolf packet log 

[ig>tx] K5KLO-10>APDW18,TCPIP*,qAC,T2RDU:!3350.85NT08417.67W&PHG5120 NE ATL 1-hop TX-iGate

What is of interest is the source call K5KLO-10

And the source call radio type APDW18 (bad example this is APRS Direwolf version 18 but you get the idea) 

You could block the radio type but again you might zap other owners of the valid radio type. In this case all owners of Direwolf including ME! 

Based on Digipi project

For more (heavy, 117 pages but good reading) details about direwolf see https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wb2osz/direwolf/dev/doc/User-Guide.pdf

Scott Sheppard

Decatur, GA 30033

KJ4ZZB Call Sign

[Allen Lord]

What Callsign/ comment information is showing up on aprs.fi? 

73,

Allen AF6OF

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