One For the WTF Files: 2 Meter Numbers Station?

Hey guys...

A fellow Ham and Arfcommer and I were fooling around with some local hams in the the Ruston Louisiana area.

They told us that they were picking up some weird stuff on the 2 meter band. So, we tuned in and listened.

I don't have the freq handy right now... I think it was around 160.65ish. Will confirm in the AM.

But, it would broadcast at the top of the hour and -sometimes- during the hour.

Here's the first recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PHTfllJn8I&feature=youtu.be

Later, around 1500L it played the stuff above, but also a random sequence of numbers.

Weird I know.

Will try and upload the other audio when I get them.

EDIT: The freq was on 164.565

Edit 2: We we're fox hunting, but we ran across this signal.

Channel 1 International VHF Marine Channels?

Numbers Station?

Nah, sounds like a Fox hunt, as in hidden transmitter.
Seem to copy XDGFR W5HGT FOX XDGFR of course it is fast for me, about 30 wpm - it is early and I am in need of more coffee

As for hearing it on 160.65 that shouldn't happen, a bit out of band for the club call sign... Might be the design of the transmitter and the main emission is in the amateur band. Fox hunting certainly can be interesting!

Call: W5HGT
LOUISIANA TECH AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
LOUISIANA TECH UNIV
PO BOX: 10348
RUSTON, LA 71272
Trustee: K5MC

The frequency was 164.565

Im still working on getting the rest of the recordings off my phone. After this recording, we heard a few more transmissions with a computer generated female voice that called out these numbers:

7:15PM 589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286 "T-Minus 3456 seconds"

9:00 PM 01001010101101001001000011001010

9:19PM 01001010101101001001000010001

9:39PM 01001010101101001001000011001

1:00AM 01001010101101001001000011001

1:19AM 01001010101101001001000011001

Huh, wow. Thats the amatuer group we were working with.

They told us they set out 1 fox... Apparently not. We got a good idea of where it may be in the local area.

We'll try to get the rest of the recordings online soon.

May be picking up a receiver image in the 160 range of a 2m signal.

They shouldn't be using music box sounds or any music on amateur radio. And they should know that.

Need to figure out with certainty if there is actually a signal on 160mhz or if that's an image. Find someone with a different IF radio and see if they hear it also, if so, they need to shut down that transmitter. Otherwise the operation might not be unusual for a fox transmitter.

Isn't the CW ID suppose to be 20wpm or less also, not that I really care bet there is a lot of WTF on that. With the sound of the transmitter I am betting it could be an image, or some clandestine NSA operation disguised as a fox hunt transmitter being out of band, hide your dogs

I'm going to go with an image in the receiver. Though it would be more interesting if the problem was on the transmitter side.

That music sounds just like what they play here on the automated construction / traffic radio station. It's a recording that plays over and over, and if there wasn't a message besides the ID it would repeat that quickly. Sounds like it's combining with the signal from the fox transmitter.

I bet if you tune across the AM or FM bands you will find that music.

Same here.

Intermod is another possibility.

I think that's the word I was looking for, thanks!

thats what it sounds like to me. remember, 16x.xxx isnt amateur band and 2m(VHF) this time of year has plenty of ducting going on. if you listen closely you can here what sounds like several signals in there.

The thing is, we kept hearing the music over the course of about 4 hours.

Edit:

I got more video links to more audio.
2nd Station Recording

3rd Station Recording

If its coming from W5HGT, are they breaking any laws with this? Because if they are, I need to inform them. I know the guys in the group and they're all college age hams. I don't want them to get in trouble.

Where did the Morse go? Sounds like it might be in the background off freq.

Only one possible answer since you're in LA:

Pirates of the Caribbean

There's morse at the end of each video.

I was thinking maybe something along the lines of a a FRED but you're above the railroad freqs by that point.

What type of radio are you using to receive the transmissions on? (make/model)

It it's an older dual conversion superheterodyne with a 10.7 IF then 164.565 -21.4 (twice the IF) would be the image of 143.165 which is below the 2m band.

Anyone care to sanity check me on this?

On second thought, how close are you to a university with a large math program?

Those digits fall in perfectly if you extend Pi out farther than the 3.14159 that most people know.

http://www.piday.org/million.php

and the other stuff is base 2 binary, the last three lines are all the same and translate to 156668441 in base 10 (decimal). My guess is that the other lines are the same sentence and numbers were either lost/missed/out of order.

Now my head hurts and I look like a much bigger nerd than I really am.

(all of the above was found via google)

We have quite the engineering program at Louisiana Tech... So yea, its a bunch of nerds I guess

What you have is an inter-mod product of the fox transmitter frequency and whatever is out putting the music. If you listen to the recordings and time the pitch peaks of the music audio you will see the timing of those audio pitch peaks correspond with the interference noise behind the Morse Code and behind the computer voice reading the number strings. This is the evidence of the audio mixing between the two sources.

Inter-mod happens, in the professional world we have to check any new frequencies at a transmitter site with all other frequencies in use within a specified radius of the site to prevent this. You just happen to be hearing it out of band and where it may not be causing anyone any issues.

Now if the Fox Transmitter was causing harmful interference to a licensed user outside the ham bands then there could be bigger issues than a cool sounding signal to puzzle out.

As a professional in the RF field I would strongly suggest that the club discontinue use of the fox transmitter until it can be checked for spurious emissions specifically but otherwise be completely checked for FCC compliance.

Radioman

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