Ham Radio Weird Signals

[jim48]

It is esoteric with its own jargon, which is why I am probably the last person to be looking into it. Even AM radio between stations sounds weird, so how do we know if it's T or ET?

[MeteorWayne]

Sorry, jim, but this has ratcheted down your credibility a bit. You create a headline about weird signals, suggesting an ET connection. You have been unable to descibe in even the most basic details as to why the hams consider it weird. Not even a most basic description of what the sound is like. I've spent 5 decades listening to shortwave and ham bands and have heard a lot of unusual things....but which are not in the slightest bit rare or unique if you listen a lot.

You have given us NOTHING to go on here, other than attempting to whip up some kind of "ET is sending us signals" suggestion, with absolutely squat, nada, zilch, to even consider giving it any credibility, or even a reason for interest.

I am disappointed, I thought you were better than that. I hope you are, and can give us a few crumbs here.

Wayne, son of K2OUF

[jim48]

I'm disappointed too, Wayne. I'll keep Y'all posted.

[MeteorWayne]

I'm disappointed too, Wayne. I'll keep Y'all posted.

I don't know why, jim. All I've asked for is the slightest clue as to what makes these "signals" unusual, and you have provided none. I don't think that's an unreasonable request when you have suggested these are ET signals.
Wayne

[jim48]

I'm disappointed too, Wayne. I'll keep Y'all posted.

I don't know why, jim. All I've asked for is the slightest clue as to what makes these "signals" unusual, and you have provided none. I don't think that's an unreasonable request when you have suggested these are ET signals.
Wayne

Why do you think I asked if there's a ham in the house? They've been suggesting ET more than I have, and they're the ham experts, not me. I don't know what sounds normal or abnormal, but I am guided by their experience. It all sounds damn strange to me! As I said, if I learn anything useful I'll pass it on.

[MeteorWayne]

Again, even if there were a ham in the house, you have provided no useful information to guide them in a search. I have my receiver hooked up, but really have no clue as to what to listen for. We need specific frequencies, and what kind of sounds are the alleged ET signals. You have provided not the slightest clue. Trust me, 3.5 MHz is not a sufficiently useful ID for the source to listen to, since there can be thousands of frequencies in use in that band. Is it 3.5012 MHz, or 3.5218 Mhz? Without that information, you have provided nothing useful to anyone who wanted to take a listen.

As stated earlier, 3.5 MHz is not the 60 meter band, that is the 80 meter band (That refers to the wavelength of the waves, FYI, the MHz is the frequency of the signal carrier). So something in what you reported makes no sense at all.

The permitted transmission in the 80 meter band include RTTY, data, phone, and images; so absolutely any kind of signal you would hear by ear (depending on the demodulation method you use...not necessarily that which it was intended to be sent and received in) would be expected.

We need specifics man!!!!

[netarch]

MeteorWayne,

I wouldn't lean too hard on Jim - this appears to be one area totally outside his areas of expertise. He'll get information from his ham friends...

Dollars to donuts - my money's on new encrypters for voice or data transmissions being used by the government, as I stated earlier. With a combination of new encrypters and new modulation methods being used by the State Department (they're probably migrating their data streams to TCP/IP, and are possibly now using something like HFIP as opposed to the popular Pactor data protocol prevalent in the ham community). Most of the new stuff has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to date it's been almost exclusively in the VHF and UHF bands, which is line-of-sight only. So it's only natural that most hams in the states would not have heard these new devices. A caveat though - lots of IP-over-VHF/UHF radio with new encrypters was tested in Florida airspace. But lot's of hams tend to "specialize" by band, so it's perfectly possible that had these hams been listening to the higher frequency bands, they might have heard it.

And before anyone pops up and says "but the military's radios are all frequency-hopping spread-spectrum, and you wouldn't hear that since hams listen on single narrow-band frequencies". Well, not all their radios are new spiffy software-defined radios with FH/SS - there's still lots of old stuff out there, despite all the trillions we've sent to the DoD the past couple of decades.

FWIW - different frequency bands require vastly different antennas, and usually different radios as well. There are multi-band radios (Like the Icom IC-706MkIIG that I own), but their sensitivity is usually not on par with specialized single-band radios. Like any technical hobby, it's easier for a ham to specialize in a few areas - like HF, for instance. It takes a lot of money to build a truly good multi-frequency ham "shack" and the attendant antenna farm.

On the other hand, I could be totally wrong here. One of the first times, I'm sure! But it is fun speculating!

[MeteorWayne]

I'm not being too hard...I'm just trying to get a few facts to work with. It's like the ET signal thread in here. We got a graph with no labels on either axis, so it means nothing. I'd like to know what the heck it was showing so we can think about it, but now months later we know nothing more so it is useless speculation. I'd like to see some facts so I can satisfy my curiousity! Not everything is a rock

[junkheap]

Maybe Jim can get one of his ham friends to register and post on here?

[jim48]

Maybe Jim can get one of his ham friends to register and post on here?

A couple said they would but I wouldn't hold my breath. Take them away from their precious listening? How dare you!! This link was provided to me by a friend at another site. My next step is to order Ham Radio for Dummies so Wayne will calm down. Speaking of calming down, so have the so-called "weird" signals, although as non-ham I do not know what constitutes weird. But they do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio