Ham Radio Weird Signals

[jim48]

Any hams out here? I have some ham radio operator friends who have told me this week of picking up strange signals, and these guys have been hams for many, many years. They have sent me e-mails and called me on the phone, knowing of my interest in alien life. I will be having lunch with them over the weekend, a dedicated group who are priceless after a hurricane when the power is out and people need info. One ham I know who is "anti-UFO" is just perplexed and almost beside himself. These guys are hearing things they've never heard before, and they've heard everything. They are almost breathless with what they are telling me, because I'm the guy who wrote a book about UFOs and now they're hearing weird but consistant signals and it will take time to sort all of this out because perhaps they stumbled into something military by accident. I would very much like to hear from ham radio operators here at SDC. Question: Some billions of dollars have been devoted to SETI over the decades. Wouldn't it be ironic indeed if the amateurs made first contact?

[BoJangles2]

10-4 rubber duckie, any ETIs out there

Probably just some sort of communications sat or scientific equipment. Either that or their next door neighbours microwave is on the blink. Do you know what frequency the anomaly was picked up on? It might give us a clue to the nature of the phenomena

[ZenGalacticore]

'Come on back. I gotta double bubble of trouble on my tail'. Blue skylights a'flashin' I'm here to say. Looks like we got us an alien convoy.

*beep*... *beep*...

GROUND CONTROL, HOUSTON- Could you repeat that Aquarius?... Jim?

*beep*... *beep*...

GROUND CONTROL, HOUSTON- Do you copy Jim?

*beep*... *beep*...

GROUND CONTROL, HOUSTON- Jim?... What is a "double bubble"?...

JIM- A cop!! Do I have to 'splain everyting to you Lucy!!!!

[Smersh]

10-4 rubber duckie, any ETIs out there

Probably just some sort of communications sat or scientific equipment. Either that or their next door neighbours microwave is on the blink. Do you know what frequency the anomaly was picked up on? It might give us a clue to the nature of the phenomena

I guess it's possible it might be some new type of communications satellite, but Jim said these guys have been hams for "many, many years," so it seems unlikely to me the signals are any of those things because they must surely by now be experts in their field. Still, lets wait to see what Jim's updates are and if his friends can make recordings and provide sound files.

[MeteorWayne]

Yeah Jim, some details would be helpful. Location, frequency, description other than just "weird", time, etc...

[jim48]

They're telling me late at night, EST, in the 60 meter band, 3.5 megahertz, whatever that means.

[a_lost_packet_]

They're telling me late at night, EST, in the 60 meter band, 3.5 megahertz, whatever that means.

I assume all these guys are in Fla? Have they confirmed this with other HAMs in other areas?

[jim48]

I am looking into this. My ham friends want me to point out that ham radio is not a chat forum. Their goal is to "make contact" with each other, given the weirdness of our planet's atmoshpere in regards to radio signals. From that I gather that making contact is of itself something of an accomplishment. In other words we ain't talking CB radio here. CB is wild and reckeless and just about obsolete thanks to cell phones. Hams retain their pride and their usefullness, and now they are hearing things they have never heard before. They point to the sky--of course--but start talking about aliens, which of course gathers my attention. Update!!! Listened to stuff at a friend's house tonight under headpones. He--a 30 veteran of ham radio--didn't have a clue. I am sorely tempted to study for and obtain a ham license of my own to further pursue this. I am told that in the old days you had to learn Morse code to qualify as a ham, but no longer. Or maybe I'll just hang with the hams. Of course we are trying to record the odd signal. Wow!!!

[MeteorWayne]

You still have yet to describe the weird signal. If you've never lested to the already weird things that you hear wnadering aorund the ham bands (and shortwave as well) anything might seem unusual to you.

Please describe WHY they are making the leap to aliens, and describe what they are hearing.

[dryson]

Should we assume that with all of the modern technology of 2009 that all of the signals being sent by the thousands of Earth and space based satellites that all types of transmission's would be catalogued to where the transmission was coming from as a security precaution to prevent a terrorist attack?
Just from serving in the military and knowing communications security protocol, the transmission would not be related to any type of military transmission especially since we are war. I am certain that the military has every frequency being listened to for any signs of terrorist's planning attacks. So the signal is not military in origin. Since your friend has been a HAM operator for 30 years I would take into account that because of his expertise that if he wasn't able to figure out what type of signal he was listening to then the signal must be of non-Earth in it's origin. The signal may have come from a cloud of interstellar dust particle's that somehow found it's way through the atmosphere.

It will be interesting to find out where this signal is eminating from. Even if the signal is not from a nSe, the find will add one more bandwidth for sky watchers to pay attention to while they search the night sky for our cosmic neighbor's.

[MeteorWayne]

Another completely unjustifiable leap in assumptions. It MUST be {insert whatever here}?
Since it is an unidentified signal, there's no reason to suggest it MUST be anything.

[jim48]

Describe the signals? I haven't heard them yet. However, here's a clip from my book on the subject that may be of use:

Project “Ozma”, as Drake had whimsically named his experiment—from The Wizard of Oz--was funded for a paltry sum as part of an existing federal grant that Green Bank had received. We can only wonder what President Eisenhower, for whom space was already anathema, would have said had he learned that taxpayer money was being used to look for little green men. The key to Drake’s essentially patchwork radio telescope was something called a parametric amplifier, which was able to magnify weak interstellar signals. On April 8, 1960, Drake and his small team were ready to switch everything on and… listen. In the pre-dawn hours of a very chilly morning, Drake aimed the radar-like “dish” antenna at the star Tau Ceti. Hours passed and the pen attached to a chart recorder—like a polygraph readout—hardly moved. Good science requires patience, of course. After lunch Drake aimed the telescope at Epsilon Eridani and hooked up a loudspeaker as well. We’ve all heard the bizarre sounds when tuning across the AM dial. Ham radio operators hear even weirder noises, as though listening in on a bunch of George Adamski’s Space Brothers in the midst of one hellacious outer space bachelor party, with the lovely Oona, a six- boobed stripper, as the featured attraction. Ah, the music of the spheres!

Then there was what Drake and his group tuned in to. Imagine a hung over and badly out of tune grunge band combined with 4th of July fireworks, wailing fire engines, gurgling drains and hissing, popping bacon in the pan and you’ll get some idea of what outer space really sounds like. Drake had been a radio buff and expert since his World War Two naval service, but even he was amazed by the hydrogen- generated cosmic cacophony. In the midst of this spaceapallooza jamboree the chart recorder needle began jumping, as though someone was banging a fist on the table at regular intervals, eight times a second every second, to be precise. The stunned men realized that this was clearly not a naturally occurring transmission. Had they picked up an alien signal on their first day of listening? Drake had the dish moved away from Epsilon Eridani, theorizing that when it was re-focused on that star and the noise returned then they were probably monitoring a man-made signal. It didn’t return again until ten days later. An auxiliary antenna then detected the signal as well, suggesting an Earth bound source, but no one could say for sure. Even Drake admits that to this day they don’t know what it was they stumbled across. They had been contacted by something, and with that the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence—Donald Keyhoe and George Adamski notwithstanding—had begun.

[MeteorWayne]

Describe the signals? I haven't heard them yet. However, here's a clip from my book on the subject that may be of use:

Huh??? Then what did this statement mean?

"Update!!! Listened to stuff at a friend's house tonight under headpones."

[netarch]

They're telling me late at night, EST, in the 60 meter band, 3.5 megahertz, whatever that means.

I assume all these guys are in Fla? Have they confirmed this with other HAMs in other areas?

I am a ham (not HAM - it's not an acronym), and I'll try listening tonight. But I'm in Maryland right now and not Florida. At night, range in the lower high frequency bands (1.8MHz to 7MHz) is pretty short, since we depend on the sun's ionization of the atmosphere to bounce signals around the globe. But if they are of "extraterrestrial orgin", that shouldn't matter.

Jim - can you ask them what mode they're using? Hams typically use LSB (Lower SideBand) and sometimes AM in the bands 40 meters and below (below 7.300MHz), and USB (Upper SideBand) for 40 meters and above (14.000MHz). 30 meters (10.100 - 10.150MHz) is data only - CW(Morse code) or RTTY (remote teletype) or similar.

Are you sure they said 80 meters? That doesn't add up, since 3.500MHz is in the 80 meter band, not 60 meters (5.5305 - 5.4064MHz). The 60 meter band is relatively new, and it's the only channelized band - we are required to use USB. I'm assuming they're listening on all available modes. They should have audio recordings of them. A quick scan of the forums at eHam.net doesn't turn up anything suspicious.

It if truly is the 60 meter band and not 80 meters, then my suspicion is that since amateurs are secondary users on this band (government is primary - lot's of State Department stuff), they're simply hearing a new encrypted modulation scheme. Since older generation Type 1 encryption devices (military grade) that the State Department uses are getting long in the tooth (read that as getting conceivably easier to crack), they've been replacing them with newer encrypters.

And since I am near Washington, DC, there's probably lots of traffic in the 60m band anyway...

[JonClarke]

We still don't know what this weird stuff is. Come on Jim share it. "Prepare to meet your doom"? "Surrender to your pentapod overlords"? ""Natives of Sol 3 taste nice with chromate sauce"?

Otherwise is just more fluff.

[jim48]

Describe the signals? I haven't heard them yet. However, here's a clip from my book on the subject that may be of use:

Huh??? Then what did this statement mean?

"Update!!! Listened to stuff at a friend's house tonight under headpones."

Poor choice of words on my part, Wayne. I should have said that I wouldn't know them if I heard them because it all sounds weird to me. Trying to describe some of the noise would be akin to trying to describe colors to a blind person. My friend would say "Did you here that?!!" Well, yeah, but it all sounds odd. "No, I mean that! Hear it?" You often hear serveral strange sounds simultaneously. Clearly they are hearing something new. They have the years and decades of listening to this stuff. I don't.

[Smersh]

... "Prepare to meet your doom"? "Surrender to your pentapod overlords"? ""Natives of Sol 3 taste nice with chromate sauce"? ...

If it is something like that, we may have to seek the advice of Vogon13.

[jim48]

... "Prepare to meet your doom"? "Surrender to your pentapod overlords"? ""Natives of Sol 3 taste nice with chromate sauce"? ...

If it is something like that, we may have to seek the advice of Vogon13.

Shall I summon him?

[JROYB]

As an avionics tech, I've spent many hours on aircraft HF radios (2 to 29.999 Mhz). I've heard lots of weird noises, frequency beats, etc................................but nothing that I would come even close to attrubuting to ET.........

[a_lost_packet_]

..Clearly they are hearing something new. They have the years and decades of listening to this stuff. I don't.

I spent a few minutes searching around. But, HAM is such an esoteric subject that I'm simply not able to qualify if the information I was reading was in any way significant. That actually piqued my interest a bit because I dislike being confronted with something I can't understand.. So, maybe I'll dig around some more and try to learn enough to, at least, be able to pick out unusual things. Then again, an experienced HAM operator would, most likely, look at any of my efforts as rudimentary and childish. I am a neophyte in all things HAM.

What is necessary though is to get some really confirmed info from your friends. ie: Some exact numbers and technical jargon associated with them. I found several instances of "WTF is this?" declarations with accompanying recordings, data sets, etc.. but, nothing that seemed to match up to the info you posted.