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Author Topic: UFO Beacon 7997.94  (Read 2343 times)

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UFO Beacon 7997.94
« on: May 31, 2009, 0743 UTC »
Heard the UFO beacon for the first time tonight.  It ran from very good at S3 or S4 to deep in the noise.



T!
Mohave Desert, California USA
T!
Mojave Desert, California USA

beaconman

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Re: UFO Beacon 7997.94
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2009, 1206 UTC »
I can't see the letters UFO however it looks like
you caught the Pike dasher up around 8000Khz...

The Pike Dasher has  a unique keying signature...it is easy
for the ear to pick out...

The Pike dasher does a very weird thing....it will send every
third or fourth dash down near 8000Khz while the other dashes
will remain around 8003.6kHz...this happens late at night thus
there are some listeners that think there is a slow dasher around
8000kHz when it is really the Pike dasher...


I was able to hear Pike dasher and UFO last night(0330Utc) up in NE North Dakota
via the Global Tuners

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Re: UFO Beacon 7997.94
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2009, 1530 UTC »
I can't see the letters UFO

Hiya beaconman,

I blew the area of letters up 4 times so that you can see the letters a little better.  Keep in mind the waterfall runs from top to bottom, so that the bottom contains the oldest information.  In other words, you read the CW from bottom to top.




however it looks like
you caught the Pike dasher up around 8000Khz...

The Pike Dasher has  a unique keying signature...it is easy
for the ear to pick out...

The Pike dasher does a very weird thing....it will send every
third or fourth dash down near 8000Khz while the other dashes
will remain around 8003.6kHz...this happens late at night thus
there are some listeners that think there is a slow dasher around
8000kHz when it is really the Pike dasher...


Note the time scale of the waterfall along the left side, and the frequency of the RF along the top.

With those two indicators you can see that the dasher along the right side is at 8000.82 kHz and that there are 24 dashes between 0613:08 and 0613:26 (14 seconds), so the dash rate is about 100 per minute.  I don't think this particular dasher, at 100 per minute, would be mistaken for a slow dasher.  Also, the only dashes not clearly shown are ones covered by static crashes a a two dash fade, in the original image, before JPG compression, the two faded dashes are easily seen.

Additionally I have another shot taken with this dasher centered, and the 8003.6 kHz Pike dasher freq can be seen on the right.  No signal is present in the Pike frequency range, so it seems I had no conditons to Pike at that time.  In this shot the UFO beacon can be seen to the left of the dasher.

I have never yet heard Pike by the way, but I keep trying ;)



T!
Mohave Desert, California USA
T!
Mojave Desert, California USA