HFU HF Underground

Loggings => ID and Translation Requests => Topic started by: nickcarr3151 on February 27, 2020, 1251 UTC

Title: UFO SATCOM
Post by: nickcarr3151 on February 27, 2020, 1251 UTC
Finally I find some success monitoring UHF SATCOM.  Still trying to figure out why but for whatever reason, a lot of UHF SATCOM transponders showed up plain as day on my SDR early this AM.  From 243.5 - 270 Mhz it was chock full of transponders.  I even had some voice traffic.

Can someone please ID the language from these two recordings? Translation would be wonderful too, if possible.

263.580 --> https://www.dropbox.com/s/7txppjnxjtr3up6/263580.mp3?raw=1
261.770 --> https://www.dropbox.com/s/tn459juggd5uxd2/261770.mp3?raw=1



Thanks!
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: sat_dxer on February 27, 2020, 1320 UTC
What time of day/night are these recordings?

What part of the sky is the antennae pointed at?
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: nickcarr3151 on February 27, 2020, 1326 UTC
What time of day/night are these recordings?

In the last 2 hours. (So around 4AM local.)


What part of the sky is the antennae pointed at?

It's a Diamond D3000N discone.  It's pointed up!  :P
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: sat_dxer on February 27, 2020, 1350 UTC
How long did it last and is it still going?

Which "UFO" satellite is this?
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: nickcarr3151 on February 27, 2020, 1355 UTC
How long did it last and is it still going? Which "UFO" satellite is this?

Those conversations lasted a while.  I signed off for the night but don't think they were still going.  I picked up a few other weaker signals though.

UFO sats are geosynchronous so I guess it has to be UFO 4 & 8 over Pacific ocean.  Per the sat footprint though I'd be at the very edge of reception.  This is why I always believed I had poor chances of catching any traffic.

Perhaps the conditions across Pacific are helping UHF signals...
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: sat_dxer on February 27, 2020, 1518 UTC
What other frequencies other than the ones listed above were noted?
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: nickcarr3151 on February 27, 2020, 1716 UTC
What other frequencies other than the ones listed above were noted?

Don't recall off-hand.
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: Josh on February 27, 2020, 2028 UTC
With a disconey for ant, I suspect the closest bird is who you heard.
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: solarix on February 28, 2020, 1145 UTC
Hey Nick

That language is Brazilian Portuguese. Those are coming from CONUS transponders.
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: ChrisSmolinski on February 28, 2020, 1717 UTC
They are fairly strong signals, I get them with just a discone as well. Years ago I had a large helical antenna on a rotor, but sadly a winter storm destroyed it.
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: nickcarr3151 on February 28, 2020, 1909 UTC
That language is Brazilian Portuguese. Those are coming from CONUS transponders.

Thanks. Yeah I listened for quite a while last night and the language is starting to sound more familiar.  I finally figured out which sats that are within my footprint.  Looks like I have UFO 3, 4, 6, 8 and FLTSATCOM 7.  I didn't realize they do move slightly and it looks like they start coming really alive around 11PM local.
Title: Re: UFO SATCOM
Post by: nickcarr3151 on February 28, 2020, 1915 UTC
They are fairly strong signals, I get them with just a discone as well.

Hehe, I feel a little stupid.  I purchased a BHP-150+ from M/C a while back.  About a week ago, I put it back into my discone's receive chain, which normally just monitors local federal activity.

I removed it last night as a test and sure enough, the signals (while still there) are much weaker.  Without tweaking the SDR waterfall + gain settings, it'd be easy to miss.  I've never had much luck with SATCOM in the past so I never gave it much thought.

Looks like I have a new interest to dabble in!  :)