Mystery Radio Signals

[Basic A]

Yosemite Sam

“Yosemite Sam” is the nickname that has been given to a mysterious shortwave radio transmission that was first reported on December 19, 2004 and may be an American counterpart to Russia’s enigmatic UVB-76 signal. It originates from the Laguna Indian Reservation in a remote area of west-central New Mexico and repeats at the top of each hour. Each transmission consists of a digital data burst followed by a short audio clip from the 1949 cartoon Bunker Hill Bunny in which character Yosemite Sam exclaims “Varmint, I’m a-gonna blow yah to smithereens!” In the original cartoon Bugs Bunny uses a combination of guile and secret weaponry to defeat Yosemite Sam’s heavily fortified redoubt.

This sounds like a cartel call... Given the region and ect.

[christophera]

there's not much pirate radio in the states. there was 3 stations running in the austin area for a brief time about 12 years ago though. KIND radio in san marcos was the best. i had a show on 94.3 Radio One Austin for a while. there was another one called Free Radio Austin. the dude that is walking along the traintracks in Waking Life is wearing their t-shirt.

I did wonder, i can imagine they regulate the shit out of it yea?

Pirate radio is pretty much nonexistant in the states

yeah everybody gets busted

[Y_H]

Interesting.

[topmo3]

this is really cool stuff! i've had several experiences of strange radio signals and transmissions. several times i've been in band practice or at home and my guitar amp has been on and suddenly some scary dodgy russian man starts talking inside it! it's well freaky! i also remember we were recording this gig of a friend of mines band, and we used this ancient cassette recorder, it picked up same type of weird russian transmission. couldn't listen to that shit alone, would freak out

[nowaysj]

Had same thing with r2d2, it was some type of theatrical broadcast or something about starwars. Cheap cables.

[Sheff]

yeah my amp used to pick up dodgy radio all the time

[alphacat]

It's kind of a strange, fascinating idea that we're literally walking around being bombarded with information carried on electromagnetic waves all of the time... and yet we're unaware of most of it.

Think I'll go listen to some Scanner for a while.

[nowaysj]

But we are just information.

====

And alpha, what is with the title of this thread? Mystery Radio Signals... so utile. Too utile.

[flyingointment]

wut

[nowaysj]

The Woodpecker

The Russian Woodpecker was a notorious Soviet signal that could be heard on the shortwave radio bands worldwide between July 1976 and December 1989. It sounded like a sharp, repetitive tapping noise, at 10 Hz, giving rise to the "Woodpecker" name. The random frequency hops disrupted legitimate broadcast, amateur radio, utility transmissions, and resulted in thousands of complaints by many countries worldwide. The signal was long believed to be that of an over-the-horizon radar (OTH) system. This theory was publicly confirmed after the fall of the Soviet Union, and is now known to be the Duga-3[1] system, part of the Soviet ABM early-warning network. This was something that NATO military intelligence was well aware of all along[citation needed], having photographed it and given it the NATO reporting name Steel Yard.

The Soviets had been working on early warning radar for their anti-ballistic missile systems through the 1960s, but most of these had been line-of-sight systems that were useful for raid analysis and interception only. None of these systems had the capability to provide early warning of a launch, which would give the defenses time to study the attack and plan a response. At the time the Soviet early-warning satellite network was not well developed, and there were questions about their ability to operate in a hostile environment including anti-satellite efforts. An over-the-horizon radar sited in the USSR would not have any of these problems, and work on such a system for this associated role started in the late 1960s.

The first experimental system, Duga-1 (47°04′30″N 31°39′00″E / 47.075000°N 31.650000°E / 47.075000; 31.650000 [2][3]), was built outside Mykolaiv in Ukraine, successfully detecting rocket launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 2,500 kilometers. This was followed by the prototype Duga-2, built on the same site, which was able to track launches from the far east and submarines in the Pacific Ocean as the missiles flew towards Novaya Zemlya. Both of these radar systems were aimed east and were fairly low power, but with the concept proven work began on an operational system. The new Duga-3 systems used a transmitter and receiver separated by about 60 km.
[edit] Appearance

Starting in 1976 a new and powerful radio signal was detected worldwide, and quickly dubbed the Woodpecker by amateur radio operators. Transmission power on some woodpecker transmitters was estimated to be as high as 10 MW Equivalent isotropically radiated power.

Triangulation quickly revealed the signals came from Ukraine. Confusion due to small differences in the reports being made from various military sources led to the site being alternately located near Kiev, Minsk, Chernobyl, Gomel or Chernihiv. All of these reports were describing the same deployment, with the transmitter only a few kilometers southwest of Chernobyl (south of Minsk, northwest of Kiev) and the receiver about 50 km northeast of Chernobyl (just west of Chernihiv, south of Gomel). Unknown to civilian observers, NATO was well aware of the new installation[citation needed], which they referred to as Steel Yard.

Civilian identification

Even from the earliest reports it was suspected that the signal were tests of an over-the-horizon radar,[4] and this remained the most popular hypothesis during the Cold War. Several other theories were floated as well, including everything from jamming western broadcasts to submarine communications. The broadcast jamming theory was debunked early on when a monitoring survey showed that Radio Moscow and other pro-Soviet stations were just as badly affected by woodpecker interference as Western stations.

As more information about the signal became available, its purpose as a radar signal became increasingly obvious. In particular, its signal contained a clearly recognizable structure in each pulse, which was eventually identified as a 31-bit pseudo-random binary sequence, with a bit-width of 100 μs resulting in a 3.1 ms pulse.[5] This sequence is usable for a 100 μs chirped pulse amplification system, giving a resolution of 15 km (10 mi) (the distance light travels in 50 μs). When a second Woodpecker appeared, this one located in eastern Russia but also pointed toward the US and covering blank spots in the first system's pattern, this conclusion became inescapable.

In 1988, the Federal Communications Commission conducted a study on the Woodpecker signal. Data analysis showed an inter-pulse period of about 90 ms, a frequency range of 7 to 19 MHz, a bandwidth of 0.02 to 0.8 MHz, and typical transmission time of 7 minutes.

* The signal was observed using three repetition rates: 10 Hz, 16 Hz and 20 Hz.
* The most common rate was 10 Hz, while the 16 Hz and 20 Hz modes were rather rare.
* The pulses transmitted by the woodpecker had a wide bandwidth, typically 40 kHz.

Jamming

One idea amateur radio operators used to combat this interference was to attempt to "jam" the signal by transmitting synchronized unmodulated continuous wave signals, at the same pulse rate as the offending signal.[6] They formed a club called the Woodpecker Hunting Club.[7]

Simple CW pulses did not appear to have any effect. However, playing back recordings of the woodpecker transmissions sometimes caused the woodpecker transmissions to shift frequency leading to speculation that the receiving stations were able to differentiate between the "signature" waveform of the woodpecker transmissions and a simple pulsed carrier.[8]

As well as disrupting shortwave amateur radio and broadcasting it could sometimes be heard over telephone circuits due to the strength of the signals. This led to a thriving industry of "Woodpecker filters" and noise blankers.

Disappearance

Starting in the late 1980s, even as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was publishing studies of the signal, the signals became less frequent, and in 1989 disappeared altogether. Although the reasons for the eventual shutdown of the Duga-3 systems have not been made public, the changing strategic balance with the end of the cold war in the late 1980s likely had a major part to play. Another factor was the success of the US-KS early-warning satellites, which entered preliminary service in the early 1980s, and by this time had grown into a complete network. The satellite system provides immediate, direct and highly secure warnings, whereas any radar-based system is subject to jamming, and the effectiveness of OTH systems is also subject to atmospheric conditions.

According to some reports, the Komsomolsk-na-Amure installation in Siberia was taken off combat alert duty in November 1989, and some of its equipment was subsequently scrapped. The original Duga-3 site lies within the 30 kilometer Zone of Alienation around the Chernobyl power plant. It appears to have been permanently deactivated, since their continued maintenance did not figure in the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine over the active early warning radar systems at Mukachevo and Sevastopol. The antenna still stands, however, and has been used by amateurs as a transmission tower (using their own antennas) and has been extensively photographed.

More...

The woodpeck is back.

http://www.arnewsline.org/storage/scripts/nsln1901.txt

Started Jan 17th...

[mks]

I'm trying to find the frequency.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

This is a cool site. I read everything on there and now i want to be a sad guy scanning the freqs for mystery tones.

[nowaysj]

Unsurprisingly, I love scanning.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

Im going home and tuning my am radio to some of these freqs to see if anything is worth recording for tunes . make some good intro stuff just like the shipping forecasts!!

[nowaysj]

Was going to record digital transmissions off my ham radio for dsf #42 but ran out of time. Crazy sounds.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

woowwwww. I love the mystery behind it all tbh.

[nowaysj]

Like a global audio forum. Plus crazy synthesizer sounds.

[alphacat]

Woodpecker = Russian naval or general mil sync signal?

[nowaysj]

Ukrainian over the horizon radar.

[wolf89]

I'm trying to find the frequency.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

Well I just spent ages on here....