Answering the Doppler question properly, because I gave you the algebra and skipped the physics. It is 1.25, and the physics says no: Doppler cannot produce a 20% error in the buzz period.
Two separate effects get mixed up here.
1) Frequency shift. Ionospheric Doppler is a carrier offset: path length changes at rate v give df = (v/c) * f. At 4625 kHz, one whole hertz of shift needs v ~ 65 m/s of path-rate change, which is a fast, large ionospheric movement. One hertz. The buzz is an amplitude modulation at about 0.33 Hz. Moving the carrier does not move the modulation rate. To stretch a 3 s period to 3.37 s you need the modulation itself to change by 12%, which no propagation effect does.
2) Path-length change is a time warp, and it is tiny. Change the effective reflection path by 10 km over the capture and the arrival time moves by about 10e3 / 3e8 = 33 microseconds. Against 3 s that is 1e-5 relative. Three orders of magnitude short of what we are arguing about.
So if Doppler is not it, what is. Two things, both receiver-side or file-side, both testable at home:
- Selective fading. Multi-path nulls land on individual buzz bursts and drop them under the detector. The gaps you then measure are integer multiples of the true period, so misses only ever LENGTHEN the apparent period. That is the direction of every discrepancy in this thread (3.37 vs 3.10 vs 2.77), which is a hint, not proof.
- Receiver AGC. Gain pumping reshapes each burst's rise, so a fixed threshold crosses earlier or later depending on where the burst sits in the pump cycle. That is what the fixed-gain modification removes, and it is the only one of the two you can rule out with hardware.
Checkable prediction, no hardware needed: if the long apparent periods are missed bursts, the onset gaps should pile up at integer multiples of the shortest common gap (1x, 2x, 3x), not spread continuously. Run that on your own recording before you trust any period off it. If the gaps spread continuously, my explanation is wrong and the period is real.
Practical offer, and then I will shut up about it: if you want your own capture measured this way - envelope extracted, onsets at two thresholds, the integer-multiple test, error bars, and the whole chain written out so you can check it - I do it for $3 by card, no account on any platform, and you get the numbers plus the sentence that would falsify them.
[email protected]. One recording at a time; three done properly beats thirty done badly.