Return of the Woodpecker: Ukranian or Russian? (video attached)

[n6hgg]

It should be expected. This has probably been monitored by others for a while now. This is definately the genuine woodpecker signal identical to the beast of 30 years ago. You can hear the phasing and timing changes and the directional shifts in the signal. Now however, it is not quite as wide and powerful, probably different antenna arrays from decades ago.

It's probable that it is from Ukraine since it was located near Chernobyl in the Soviet era. Whoever is radiating the signal, they would be looking for a missile attack coming from the enemy or from anyone else in the world. The signal is about 200kc wide this morning on 10.5 mhz, very strong also. 10.5 mhz was the fundemental. I haven't heard this thing since the Nuke melted down over there.

 

[spacellamaman]

best thread title evar

 

[wa8pyr]

It's probable that it is from Ukraine since it was located near Chernobyl in the Soviet era. Whoever is radiating the signal, they would be looking for a missile attack coming from the enemy or from anyone else in the world. The signal is about 200kc wide this morning on 10.5 mhz, very strong also. 10.5 mhz was the fundemental. I haven't heard this thing since the Nuke melted down over there.

Doubtful that Ukraine has one but there are several OTH radars out there; if it's the current Russian one the transmitter appears to be in Mordovia, southeast of Moscow.

The Duga-1 radar near Chernobyl was decommissioned in 1989; before the invasion the site was a fairly popular tourist stop (there are quite a few videos on Youtube from people who have visited the site). Might be interesting to try a DXpedition there someday; who knows how much effective radiated power you could get if you successfully connected a 100-watt ham transceiver to it (during the Soviet era it was estimated to be putting out around 10 megawatts effective radiated power).

Duga-1:

 

[dlwtrunked]

It should be expected. This has probably been monitored by others for a while now. This is definately the genuine woodpecker signal identical to the beast of 30 years ago. You can hear the phasing and timing changes and the directional shifts in the signal. Now however, it is not quite as wide and powerful, probably different antenna arrays from decades ago.

It's probable that it is from Ukraine since it was located near Chernobyl in the Soviet era. Whoever is radiating the signal, they would be looking for a missile attack coming from the enemy or from anyone else in the world. The signal is about 200kc wide this morning on 10.5 mhz, very strong also. 10.5 mhz was the fundemental. I haven't heard this thing since the Nuke melted down over there.

The original Woodpecker used about 40 kHz wide: but 4 frequencies often close together in a rotational pattern that made it sometimes seem wider. The original Woodpecker had 3 location and today the Russians have several locations or HF OTHR (Other the Horizon Radars) including this:
Russian OTHR 29B6 Konteyner analysis
and

Container radar - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Note the Chinese also operate such HF radars (and there are, of course, different sounding radars from the U.S., Cyprus, the U.K. and others.
And article on the original Woodpecker can be found in

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Monitoring-TImes/1980s/Monitoring-Times-1985-08.pdf

(I was the author.)

 

[n6hgg]

Yea, interesting. It could be Russian paranoia stemming from recent actions. Maybe the Soviets took all that transmitter equipment back to Russia when they decommissioned the thing. My impression just by listening to the signal and playing around with it is that it's a lower power signal than it was in the 80s. Back in the 80s we would get hammered so bad during ham radio rag chews and whatnot by that thing, because it would cover several MHz wide and sometimes it could be 40 to 50 over S9 on the meter. Sometimes it was dominant and the noise blankers in the old Kenwood TS-830 and this TS-440 that I'm listening on were designed to counteract the woodpecker.

Why would this thing be back on the air? I thought they had moved on from this dinosaur type of othr.

Thanks, very interesting links.

 

[wa8pyr]

Why would this thing be back on the air? I thought they had moved on from this dinosaur type of othr.

Actually, these things are making a comeback; they're a lot cheaper than satellites, and for countries that don't do military satellites on their own, are the only viable option for OTH radar.

Detecting missile launches are only one of the things they do; monitoring maritime traffic is one of their additional uses.

 

[W8WCA]

I have not seen this anywhere else.
I will check it now and then.

Anyone here catch it?