Help on these signals please gentlemen.

[Sol100]

Good day everyone.
Well my SWL gets more interesting, now that I can see signals on a water fall spectrum.
I've always had strange signals drop in and disappear and I always put these down to atmospherics or some other magic. I posted these up as pics on the forum a few weeks ago and pretty well received an answer straight away (thanks). It turns out that these were ionosondes sweeping the band. I also discovered that there were a number of fixed signals that are used for some thing similar and are also a pain.
Now here's a new query. )
Apart from the ionosonde sweeps I have been receiving another signal that some times drops in while listening. Last year I was able to catch it visually on an audio water fall display 12KHz wide. The signal always comes in quickly on a higher frequency slows down and fades out. Sometime it actually gains frequency before it fades out. Its all a bit hard to picture but I've caught it on the Excalibur and placed it as an attachment.
Up until now I've put it down to random spurious signals (lightning) and the Doppler effect. However watching the Excalibur I can now see that these signals have a pattern and repeat at set intervals of about 22 seconds ending some times on the same frequency. Also I've observed them from 8MHz to mid to high 20's depending on what time of day.
Why do I get the feeling this QRM and just another radio propagation signal?
Opinions please ?
Thanks

 

[k9rzz]

It doesn't 'look' that loud. Does it really bother you that badly? I'm usually blanking that stuff out when I'm listening to a 'real' station. :^] Especially on 20 meter phone. There's enough garbage to filter out between the ears without even noticing something like that.

Okay, to be honest? I think you need some new targets to focus on. Kinda like going hunting for bear, but letting the mosquitoes get the best of you. :^]

 

[Token]

I can't speak to what they are, but I can say they happen in many different freq ranges. I have seen them from 5 MHz up to over 25 MHz. Some are very clean and others a little rough. I find they normally are pretty predictable, if today at 1500 UTC you hear them on 18 MHz then tomorrow you will also. Is this a function of propagation or is it a schedule? I don't know.

Yeah, it is not like they are very annoying, but still I want to know what they are.

Here is a screen shot of one around 23880 kHz, it was repeating every 48 seconds.

T!

 

[Sol100]

Wow

That was a Pretty quick reply!
K9rzz the signal doesn't really bother me and their not all ways that strong BUT curiosity!
That's what got me started in radio in the beginning. Can't remember what age but I remember tuning in dads very expensive eight transistor radio and hearing an unbelievable range of strange sounds. My wife would probably agree with you (not the bear hunting bit) that I should be doing something else. I'm hunting a beer at the moment. Mmmmmm Beer.
Tokken are you up early or late? Haven't got them up to five as yet only to about eight. Although you can't see it in my attachment there were another lot of the same type of signals but closer together. Seems to indicate that there may be more than one source? You can also get them multipath and see the delays.
Also another thing that poped into my mind is that I've only noticed them for about two years or so?
Maybe because the bands have been pretty quiet due to the cycle.
It's strange that their not linear in their decay and that's why I initially thought it was some sort of Doppler effect. Still we'll see if any one else has any idea's.
The beer fairy is here...
C Ya
Sol

 

[Token]

Sol100, there is no telling when I am at the radio, typically very early in the morning and late
evening California time.

As far as these possibly being the result of Doppler, that should be pretty easy to dismiss.
The frequency range of the one I posted, for example, is about 210 kHz. At a center freq of
23880 kHz a Doppler shift of 210 kHz would equate to a radial velocity shift of roughly
4,750,000 kPH, or 2,950,000 MPH.

I have seen more than one at a time in a given freq range.

I believe I have been hearing these signals for many years, but it was not until I got a waterfall
display wider than the audio bandwidth of a traditional radio that I noticed them and started
tying some past-heard sounds to the image. There is another similar, but linear rate, signal
I see at times between 5 MHz and 9 MHz.

As far as multipath how are you determining that?

T!

 

[Sol100]

Agreed

I pretty well dismissed the Doppler shift theory when I saw the whole picture on the waterfall. It was seeded on my old radio when all I could see was the audio shift, a slight curve before it straightened.
Multipath? - Sometimes when I was looking at the audio waterfall I would notice that the signal would occasionally have a faint mirror image almost on top of it. May have been a totally different signal but at the time the thought was good to me. I've heard some SW broadcast stations sound like and echo and I assumed that that it was multi path effect. Also on some HF weather fax pics received you can get a slight ghosting effect and I'm pretty confident that this was due to multi pathing.
Now with the new radio I'm going through a learning experience, all good though.
I'm still searching the web for sondes maybe I can answer my own question...
Just a quick on before I go Tokken. Do you have an FRG-100 in you collection?
C Ya All.
Sol

 

[PresentedIn4D]

At first thought, it looks like ARQ-35 Ionosonde..
You sure its not?

 

[Token]

At first thought, it looks like ARQ-35 Ionosonde..
You sure its not?

Is this possibly a typo and you mean the AN/TRQ-35? At least, I am not aware of a ionosonde function of the AN/ARQ-35, and I think the only platform for the ARQ-35 is the E-2C.

T!

 

[Token]

Just a quick on before I go Tokken. Do you have an FRG-100 in you collection?

No, the FRG-100 and the FRG-9600 are two FRG's not in my collection. I have all of the others, from the FRG-7 to the FRG-8800.

T!

 

[Sol100]

Hundreds of them

Being doing a bit of research on the web and there's actually a fair bit on sondes.
I found that I have one located not far from where I live and that there's 100's of them all over the world.
The links are pretty boring but there is useful information in them once you get through the waffle.
It's probably more for people located in my part of the world bur it's still a pretty interesting site. (I know, I need to get a life)
IPS - HF Systems
http://www.ips.gov.au/IPSHosted/INAG/pdf/inag53.pdf
http://www.ips.gov.au/IPSHosted/INAG/web-72/2011/perth_ionosonde.pdf
After saying all of that I still haven't found a close match to what I first posted so more research needed.

Sorry Token keep spelling your handle wrong, not intentional.
I have an FRG-100 find it a great little radio. Does not shame itself against the newer receivers if you just compare reception. A must have for you.

C Ya
Sol

 

[Jimepage]

Possibly picking up a meteor.

 

[Token]

Possibly picking up a meteor.

I don't think so. These signals repeat on a regular schedule, every so many seconds, and are
always nearly identical. Meteors do not enter the atmosphere on a regular schedule, and they
are not moving in excess of 2,900,000 MPH. In fact, the fastest of them would be less than 1/50
that rate.

T!

 

[Jimepage]

hmmm... those are strange!

 

[Sol100]

Getting stranger

G'day All
A bit further down the track and I don't have a definitive answer to my original query. As a matter of fact I'm getting more curious by the day. The number of these signals is increasing from the odd few to hundreds of what appears to be random signals. I get the feeling my last theory of radiosondes is out the window on this one. Sure, there are still signals that have an obvious pattern to them but there are now hundreds that appear to be totally random and don't follow a linear decay pattern.
Again any suggestions or opinions welcome.

 

[Token]

The one with the negative curve ending at 13250 I have seen before, and I just saw one of the ones with the "nose" shape on the right side, but about 300 kHz higher in freq around 13800.

A couple of things to keep in mind; You have never had a receiver allowing you to notice such things before, in the past one of these would have just sounded like a signal floating through if you noticed it at all. And the conditions at higher frequencies (where these seem to be most common) have been on a rapid improvement in the past two months. If I remember right you have had your Excalibur for about 5 months? During the first few months of ownership conditions on these bands was poor, at best.

I don't know if you have ever been to the #wunclub IRC chat but just the other day a few of us discussed exactly these signals, and in real time we were able to determine that people were seeing them over a long range, like the same one was seen in EU and the US at the same time.

It is possible these are some kind of sonde, but I really have no idea. As repetitive and wide ranging as they are I feel they are intentional, I just don't know what for.

T!

 

[Sol100]

Strange

Your right on the money Token. The occurrence of these signals is becoming more common, and now that that I can actually see them they stand out. Puts a new perspective on all the "chirps and cheeps" that one heres on the older radios. When the obove shot was snapped I could see some of these signals around the 26 - 27 MHz regionas well, not very common for that time of evening. On my searching I yet again found another interesting site that carries out HF ionospheric research. TIGER HF Radars Homepage - La Trobe University
It's worth a quick look, if not for anything else that it uses HF radar for reasearch. Which reminds me of another couple of places I need to look at. One being the Jindalee over the horizon radar, worth a look at. Jindalee Operational Radar Network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The other being a conspiracy theorists dream of mind and weather control - Or as we know it the High Frequency Active Auroral Program (HAARP)
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/index.html

Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of these strange signals one day.
Sol

 

[Token]

On my searching I yet again found another interesting site that carries out HF ionospheric research. TIGER HF Radars Homepage - La Trobe University
It's worth a quick look, if not for anything else that it uses HF radar for reasearch. Which reminds me of another couple of places I need to look at. One being the Jindalee over the horizon radar, worth a look at. Jindalee Operational Radar Network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The other being a conspiracy theorists dream of mind and weather control - Or as we know it the High Frequency Active Auroral Program (HAARP)
HAARP Home Page

HF Radars are signals that I do spend a little bit of time looking at. They intrigue me because I do have a bit of a background in radar, but my personal experience is all in the VHF and up range.

TIGER is a SuperDARN-like radar that consist of a fairly simple waveform and a frequency range of about 8 to about 20 MHz, again, SuperDARN operating region. I think the TIGER power is a bit less than SuperDARN.

Jindalee is fairly well known, and the probable waveforms (I do not know if they have ever actually been confirmed) are reasonably identifiable once you have seen them or had them pointed out to you.

HAARP is interesting. It has such a large selection of waveforms that it might use that it can be difficult to say, in real time, if a specific signal is HAARP or not. There are some good indicators that can help. HAARP is frequency limited, roughly 2750 kHz to 10500 kHz. The published numbers are 2.8 to 10 MHz, but I think I have seen 2750 kHz and 10300 kHz out of it. For me, at my location, power levels can be a real indicator, it tends to be about the strongest signal in whatever band it is on at the time. Another good indicator, although sometimes after the fact, is the HAARP web-site HF spectrum monitor waterfall itself. When HAARP has been active you can tell by the presence of a very strong signal displayed on this monitor: Spectrum Monitor Waterfall Chart (this image is for the last 36 hours and changes constantly). For the last week or so HAARP has been pretty active, here are a few of the waveforms I have seen out of it recently (but have seen many more over time, including some interesting pulsed waveforms):

http://www.pbase.com/token/image/133454449/original.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/token/image/133454508/original.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/token/image/133454838/original.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/token/image/133532435/original.jpg (this last file is probably HAARP, but I am not quite sure, and also it is a pretty large file, only click if you don't mind an image a few MB in size).

I am at work right now, so do not have most of my hobby/radio links available to me, but after I get home I will add a post to this thread with links to a few pages containing some exemplar sound files for various radars and similar emissions.

As I said before, the IRC chat #wunclub can be an excellent source of collaborative information. Also, the various remote radio networks, such as Global Tuners, SDR-Console, and the Perseus Network can sometimes give indicators of location.

T!

 

[Sol100]

All very interesting.

So that's what HAARP signals look like! I have seen some signals like that but didn't have a clue what I was looking at.
Working out this problem is like being given a mono colored jigsaw puzzle and trying to put it together, not impossible but pretty dam hard.
I was wondering what results I would get if I contacted some of the obove organisations and asked if they recognised the waterfall signals. Only one way to find out)

Did have a very quick look at wun group and will check it out in details when time permits.

Completely off on a tangent. Token could any of these be space based signals, Jupiter ect ?
Given that we don't have purpose built antenna and the background QRM is so high, would we even be able to pick them up? It's just a thought.

Thanks
SOL