Morse code on SW, or alien invasion?

[Gabe001]

Hello, just decided to fire up my regentone today, in the garden with a small 3m wire aerial.

Happened to pick up this on SW (I think) around 15m
Turn the volume up
https://youtu.be/rNBu0q7ka7Y

Is this Morse code, or are we going to face an "independence day" type 👽 invasion?

Gabriel

[ms660]

There's a Ham band close to 15 Metres.

Lawrence.

[Aub]

Sounds like a contest on 20 metres. Several Morse stations at once.

Cheers

Aub

[Aub]

Should have said 21 MHz.

[Gabe001]

Originally Posted by Aub

Sounds like a contest on 20 metres. Several Morse stations at once.

Cheers

Aub

Nobody invited me to the Morse code party
I wonder if it's anyone nearby

G

[Techman]

Originally Posted by Gabe001

I wonder if it's anyone nearby

Unlikely.

[Station X]

Why would aliens use morse code?

[Dave757]

Hi

The radio is showing it tuned roughly to 14MHz (20 metre ham band).
There are several morse code contests in progress today.

Kind regards
Dave.

[Gabe001]

Originally Posted by Station X

Why would aliens use morse code?

It's a pun on the film "independence day", where aliens used a similar signal to synchronise their invasion. They also used Windows 95 compatible servers

G

[Station X]

Whatever the pun is I don't get it.

Morse code aka Carrier Wave (CW) is far from dead on the amateur bands. It enables long distance contacts using simple equipment. The filter between your ears enables you to pick up the wanted signal when it's mixed in with unwanted ones.

[broadgage]

Originally Posted by Station X

Why would aliens use morse code?

I doubt that they would.
It is however a reasonable assumptions that aliens would develop a somewhat similar code that uses simple pulses rather than anything more sophisticated.
Useful in marginal or unknown conditions, or when only basic equipment is available.

Humans have developed all sorts of more sophisticated communications, but there is still a field for morse.

It is most unlikely that any code used by aliens could be understood by humans, at least initially, though we would probably recognize it as being a product of intelligence.

[Ian - G4JQT]

Sounds like a mix of Morse and RTTY beating with each other without a BFO.

(No aliens required.)

[paulsherwin]

Independence Day had lots of ludicrously implausible postulates, the most bizarre one being that the huge alien mothership had USB sockets everywhere, handy for hacking by Jeff Goldblum.

Back on topic now please.

[Graham G3ZVT]

There are at least four Morse signals in there to my ears. It's the nature of 20m propagation that it's unlikely any of the signals will be local or even from the UK

I've boosted the amplitude, applied a lot of noise reduction and slowed it down to about half speed.

The strongest one resolving at about 700Hz says something like CQ TEST SSN BES
The dots are very staccato at the beginning, and I'm assuming CQ is being sent (general call)
TEST in this context is short for "contest". You would expect the stations callsign (which would indicate the country) to be next, but SSN BES (which is very clear) makes no sense to me.

It's a pity the clip is so short really.

The signals must have been heterodyning against something acting as a BFO, there are several possibilities.

[SiriusHardware]

If you want to complain about Morse misused in films try rewatching 'Enemy Of The State' (Will Smith, Gene Hackman), as I did recently. Every time one of the 'government' surveillance satellites is shown sweeping across the sky, allegedly repositioning, the shot is accompanied by rapid Morse...

'CQ CQ CQ....'

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

If you want to complain about Morse misused in films try rewatching 'Enemy Of The State' (Will Smith, Gene Hackman), as I did recently. Every time one of the 'government' surveillance satellites is shown sweeping across the sky, allegedly repositioning, the shot is accompanied by rapid Morse...

'CQ CQ CQ....'

Everyone knows it should be HI HI HI HI

[dsergeant]

20m, Scandinavian Activity Contest, nothing special happens every weekend. But because the signals are not properly tuned in, in a wide bandwidth and beating with each other, it is impossible to copy. And the volume on the Youtube recording was VERY low.

https://www.sactest.net/blog/

Dave G3YMC

[Gabe001]

Thanks Dave and Graham, very informative. The signal was very faint, hence the low quality recording. I don't have a proper aerial just a 3m length of speaker wire.

I suppose I got a bit overexcited by the fact that I actually got something on shortwave, that waveband had about 3 loud and clear stations yesterday in addition to the Scandinavian morse contest. Granted, this was the first time I ran an aerial outdoors, away from WiFi and other interference from the house. The other bands were pretty good too.

I generally use my sets through the pickup or gram input, but what I experienced yesterday was a healthy respect for 1940s engineering.

Gabriel

[Restoration73]

I have received emissions from Jupiter around 15MHz. No CW, but the sound of waves on
the beach. I was not able to derive any identification or entertainment value though.

[AC/HL]

I can remember listening to short wave on the Family's Ekco A28 as a youngster. Plenty of activity then, although my Morse is limited to SOS, which I never heard of course. One signal that always puzzled me sounded like a buzzer down a very long corridor, usually with a bit of fading, presumably some sort of machine generated signal?