[GreenKeys] Strange RTTY Signal on 29.684

Sun Jun 8 13:32:41 EDT 2008

The reason for my admittedly lengthy and somewhat disjointed post was to 
inform Geoff of another possible source of his mysterious signal. The 
strange signal suddenly popped up about the same time the military sets up 
radio relay paths in his backyard during their annual training exercises.

 The Korean War vintage communications vans that are being used with their 
teletype gear seemed to be possible source or perhaps is only a coincidence. 
Since I was only employed to work on commercial teletype equipment (mainly 
m15 vintage) and not overly familiar with military communications gear other 
than what I have in my personal and our museum's collections, I'll leave the 
final determination up to the experts on the list.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: telegrapher at att.net
To: Steve Cichorsky ; GreenKeys 4Post
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2008 8:24 AM
Subject: [GreenKeys] Strange RTTY Signal on 29.684

If there is any question about the Cal. Nat'l Guard at  San Luis Obispo 
using outdated material or living in outdated quarters, i will gladly 
provide anyone who wants to see them,  pictures of same.  I thought they 
were WWI types when i first went on the base.  Definitely WWII vintage  at 
least.  I've not been on that installation since 2005 so maybe some things 
have changed.

That's where they have held the MRCG get together for the past couple years. 
We used to be able to get a room in the barracks for little or nothing but 
that has changed.  Otherwise it's a real nice place to go spend a couple of 
days with the old military radio collectors group.

Last one i went to i took a 28KSR but couldn't peddle it.  Don't know what 
this has to do with the strange signal posting?

Larry
W0OGH

-------------- Original message from "Steve Cichorsky" 
<steve at telephonepioneer.net>: -------------- 

> "Geoff Fors" Wrote:
>
> > I'm about 150 miles up the coast from Vandenburg AFB, in Monterey. 
> > Unless
> > the signal is extremely high power I don't think it would make it up 
> > here.
> > The consensus
> > among the locals is that the signal is from the north of us, i.e. San
> > Francisco Bay area, which
>
> >encompasses a lot of terrain including quite a few military
> >installations.<<<
>
>
>
> Keep in mind that the U.S. Army Reserve and California National Guard are
> doing their annual two-weeks of summer camp just south of you at Ft. 
> Hunter
> Liggett and Camp Roberts which are contiguous to each other. A few years
> ago, while on a service call to an AT&T microwave site located on 
> Tassajarra
> Peak, I ran into a military communications van staffed by two National
> Guardsmen. They told me they had to stay there for two weeks and the path
> terminated at Port Hueneme (USN) near Oxnard.
>
> When I commented on the vintage telephone (F1) handset used on the order
> wire and they informed me that the van was manufactured during the Korean
> War. They said the Cal National Guard was still using vintage WWII and
> Korean War equipment.
>
> They mentioned that one of the other relay links in the path was located
> near the dam at Lake Nacimento, adjacent to Ft. Hunter Liggett and Camp
> Roberts.
>
> A few months later, while driving over the lake's spillway, I spotted a
> commercial power company's pole with a permanent 100 amp connector that I
> have since found out was installed to allow the military to plug their 
> vans
> into during their annual exercises.
>
> The reason I brought this up is because your first inquiry coincided with
> the start of their training season. Perhaps a coincidence but who knows?
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Geoff Fors"
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 7:56 PM
> Subject: [GreenKeys] Strange RTTY Signal on 29.684
>
>
> >I am a bit behind on replying to some of the messages about this topic.
> >
> > I'm about 150 miles up the coast from Vandenburg AFB, in Monterey. 
> > Unless
> > the signal is
> > extremely high power I don't think it would make it up here. The
> > consensus
> > among the locals is that the signal is from the north of us, i.e. San
> > Francisco Bay area, which encompasses a lot of terrain including quite a
> > few
> > military installations. I am working on getting reports from up in that
> > area to see if the signal can be heard there.
> >
> > I agree that upon further listening this signal is technically not 
> > Baudot
> > RTTY but actually FSK data with a narrow shift. I will hook up the DES
> > M-7000 and see if I can
> > determine the baud rate and shift.
> >
> > I checked lower frequencies (i.e. divide by 2, 3, etc.) to see if this 
> > was
> > a
> > harmonic, but they are all clear.
> >
> > In my case, I determined the frequency by the lazy and simple method of
> > just
> > tuning for zero beat. For all intents and purposes 29.684 is accurate
> > enough to say where it is. The receiver is an R-1051B/URR slaved to a
> > URQ-10 frequency standard.
> >
> > Regarding Peter's comment, you are right, there isn't much to copy on HF
> > as
> > far as commercial RTTY these days, other than something like the French
> > South Pacific naval station FUF's marker broadcast (which switches to
> > encrypted when they actually send something.) I tried to read some
> > Russian
> > shipping RTTY using third-shift Cyrillic decoding but that ended in
> > frustration as well. There's always the new weekend KSM RTTY broadcasts
> > brought to us by the brave folks at Radiomarine.org.
> >
> > Geoff
> > WB6NVH
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net
> > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
> >
> >
> >
> > -- 
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> > 11:17 AM
> >
> >
>
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Checked by AVG.
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11:17 AM 