The Buzzerparapolitical.com wrote:“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.
wikipedia wrote:UVB-76 (sometimes referred to as UZB-76, but recently MDZhB[1]) is the call sign of a shortwave radio station that usually broadcasts on the frequency 4625 kHz (AM suppressed lower sideband). It is known among radio listeners by the nickname The Buzzer. It features a short, monotonous About this sound buzz tone (help·info), repeating at a rate of approximately 25 tones per minute, for 24 hours per day. The station has been observed since around 1982.[2] On rare occasions, the buzzer signal is interrupted and a voice transmission in Russian takes place. Despite much speculation, the actual purpose of this station remains unknown to the public.[3]
Normal transmission
A spectrum for UVB-76 showing the suppressed lower sideband. (image below)
The station transmits a buzzing sound that lasts 1.2 seconds, pausing for 1–1.3 seconds, and repeating 21–34 times per minute. Until November 2010, the buzz tones lasted approximately 0.8 seconds each.[2] One minute before the hour, the repeating tone was previously replaced by a continuous, uninterrupted alternating tone, which continued for one minute until the short repeating buzz resumed, although this no longer occurs.[4]
The Buzzer has apparently been broadcasting since at least 1982[2] as a repeating two-second pip, changing to a buzzer in early 1990.[5][6] It briefly changed to a higher tone of longer duration (approximately 20 tones per minute) on January 16, 2003, but it has since reverted to the previous tone pattern.
Malfunctions
Frequently, distant conversations and other background noises can be heard behind the buzzer, suggesting that the buzz tones come from a device placed behind a live and constantly open microphone (rather than a recording or automated sound being fed through playback equipment), or that a microphone may have been turned on accidentally.[7] One such occasion was on November 3, 2001, when a conversation in Russian was heard:[2]"Я — 143. Не получаю генератор." "Идёт такая работа от аппаратной." ("I am 143. Not receiving the generator (oscillator)." "That stuff comes from hardware room.").[8]
Voice messages & other sounds
Voice messages from UVB-76 were very rare until a sudden spate of activity in the latter half of 2010.[9] They are usually given in Russian by a live voice and repeated.[10] At least seven such messages have been intercepted in over twenty years of (non-continuous) observation.[11] Some examples of such messages include:
* At 2100 UTC on December 24, 1997: "Ya UVB-76, Ya UVB-76. 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14. Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4."[2][4][12]
* At 1335 UTC on August 23, 2010: "UVB-76, UVB-76. 93 882 NAIMINA 74 14 35 74" (Recording of August 23rd transmission)[13][14]
Location and function
Although there is much speculation about the transmitter site, the station's transmitter is believed to be located near Povarovo, Russia [15] at 56°4′59.59″N 37°6′37.01″E / 56.0832194°N 37.1102806°E / 56.0832194; 37.1102806 which is about halfway between Zelenograd and Solnechnogorsk and 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of Moscow, near the village of Lozhki. The location and callsign were unknown until the first voice broadcast of 1997.[16]
The purpose of UVB-76 has not been confirmed by government or broadcast officials. However the former Minister of Communications and Informatics of the Republic of Lithuania has written that the purpose of the voice messages is to confirm that operators at receiving stations are alert.[4][12][17]
The Woodpecker
More...wikipedia wrote: 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.
