Mystery
 

This was recently posted on the Portishead Radio ex-staff Facebook Page. A local newspaper article from 1976 which apparently reports reception of a cw message sent some 10 years earlier. Any explanations?


(I knew QRYs were high in the 1970s and 1980s but 10 years is a bit excessive).


Larry +

Sounds legit.....:D

Nothing to do directly with this thread, but remindes me of a book I read many years ago:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...d_Gave_to_Cain :jump:

Again,not thread related but I did receive an e-mail that had taken 13 days between London and Teesside, old Hotmail days.
geoff

I remember a lecturer at college telling us about a BBC Laboratory that picked up a tv broadcast from some American station. Turned out the station had closed down 8 years before, I have no reason to disbelieve our esteemed lecturer.
Bill

Sounds like the beer was a bit stronger back then …. :sweat:

Stone cold sober Bob, we could not afford beer back then - nor were we old enough (wink, wink).

All we need to do is work out how far the broadcast could travel in eight years, divide by two and we will know where it had been. Then we could ring them up and ask them if they had heard it. Bit of lag on the line...

I suspect you all know of two science fiction stories from two very eminent scientists.

A for Andromeda by Fred Hoyle

And

Contact by Carl Sagan.

Both used similar phenomena to this thread. They were good stories, from outstanding scientists, and stories often become science (see H.G. Wells.)

As an ex-sparky, I've always thought radio waves will be our gateway to the stars.:supercool:

It doesn't make sense to me. If it is a TR from the QM to GKS, sent on a ship's working frequency, how did the QE2 R/O ever hear it? he wouldn't have been listening there.

It reminds me of an Alistair MacLean novel, can't remember which one, where the hero sneaks into a ship's radio room and sends out a message pretending to be Portishead. On a fifties cargo ship with crystal controlled Tx? Yea sure…….

There are strange things done -- When I was about 15 years old I was in the army cadets at school and we had a signals platoon with a couple of different field radios. One saturday morning I was operating an "18" set (normally a two man operation) just walking down the street comunicating with our base when a little old lady came bursting out of her house complaining to me that she could hear me on her TV set. Not too up on the technicality but understand there can be induction when a signal is powerful enough at close range to overcome set frequencies?

That can certainly happen if the transmitter is close enough to any receiver as the signal can simply breakthrough. When I was a kid a taxi driver lived a couple of doors away, and when he was sitting in his car before going out we'd often heear him coming through the TV.

There's also stories of people with old style metal fillings in their teeth which can act as a diode and detect signals.

If they lived near Rugby Radio their watches were always correct … :big_tongue:

I had an 18 set when I was a teenager. I think it operated around 50 Mhz. The old B and W BBC was transmitted in that region so very possibly the little old lady thought she had joined the ACF.

My mate was given a 19 set. I had an old battery/valve radio. We connected the battery to the 19 set and threw a length of wire onto the shed roof for an aerial.
He went into the house to get some drinks just as I decided to try the 19 set. He came running out shouting 'turn it off' His mother had been watching telly (old VHF 405 lines) when the picture went all fuzzy and all he could hear was me saying 'Maurice, can you hear me' :)

We watched this movie one trip to sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_(film) and the R/O said he had heard of similar incidences. A. M. Low's "Adrift in the Stratosphere", a 1937 book has the continuance of radio signals bouncing round as one of its sub plots.

I can think of a couple of likely causes, firstly you were breaking through into the audio amplifier in the TV receiver, which would have been an AM set and so using the same modulation system as your WS18. Secondly, a lot of TV sets or the era had a 14MHz IF, so anyone close by transmitting on 14MHz or a sub-harmonic like 7 MHz could breakthrough on the TV upsetting the picture and/or sound. I'm sure others will have other explanations. The WS18 wasn't the best of British design, it covered 6 to 9 MHz and only had to be used over a short distance, so harmonic suppression wasn't that great I would guess.

Cheers

Roger

I remember the QM report at the time, I think Shortwave Magazine had a mention of it? The story about TV reception from the USA also crops up from time to time, it's certainly not uncommon for trans-atlantic signals on low VHF, working the States is common on the 50MHz ham band, often with low power. I've a feeling there are photos of the US station's test card around?

As to where these signals have been.......................?? The QM signals sound an unlikely hoax, who would be listening for such traffic? It might be worth browsing this site,

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/

for info on these and other strange radio events.


73 ES STENDEC

Roger

When the BBC broadcast from Borough Hill in Daventry, local residents couldn't listen to anything else.

Hammond Innes, who wrote the book that Tom linked, used radio quite a bit in his books. The Cain book had the dead radio operator holding the amateur callsign G2STO. However, the G2AAA-ZZZ series of callsigns never reached S as WW2 intervened and after the war the G3AAA sequence started.

Innes also wrote "Atlantic Fury" which is based around the Benbecula rocket range and St Kilda, IIRC. The amateur in that story holds the callsign GM3CMX, which would have been a real call, although I was never able to find out if it had been issued.

+

Roger

There is no doubt that strange things could happen to signals under unusual propagation conditions. In my experience this could happen in a North-South or South-North direction and particularly at the equinoctes, but not really on E -W or W-E paths.

I have observed delays of several minutes to transmissions from PCH/SVA/HEB/GKA when in the S Atlantic or around Oz. A traffic list, for example, supposed to begin at a specified time would start four or five minutes later. After experiencing this over some days and with different stations, I had to conclude that the signals either went around the earth in an atmospheric duct for a while, or off into outer space before bouncing off something and returning to earth.
I favour the atmospheric duct idea because of the large temperature difference between my location and that of the transmitting station.

BUT I could be wrong. I just don't believe the story that began the thread.

I've often heard 1/7th second delay which gives a sort of echo-y effect. But several minutes !! .. that would have to be some duct.

What is often notable on the news when reporters are talking to presenters in the studio is a several second delay due to the comms links, and particularly the satellite coms. At 22,000 miles it takes radio waves about a quarter of a second to get there and back. This could be increased if multiple hops are used.

I am not sure what my old dog used to do, but the olfactory signal used to come through before the audible one quite often. There was no mistaking it.