Interesting Chris, I have seen that, or another, 15 second spaced dasher before, however not on 6950 kHz. A question, any way to confirm if it was right on 6950 kHz or might it have been a tenth or more off?
Now some interesting coincidences that might or might not have anything to do with this. I am not claiming anything here, just mentioning some things I have seen and that showed up in my logs when I did a search on 15 seconds and dashes / “Pips”.
In the past there have been postings on the forums here about sometimes shorter dashers that I call “Pips” in my logbook. Pulse lengths that I have seen have been from 0.063 sec to 1.5 seconds. Pulse rep times have been from 3 to 10.5 seconds. All frequencies have been very close to a full kHz step, i.e. 6920.0, 7800.0, 9050.0, etc. The actual freqs have consistently run a few Hz low, but close enough that I think they are trying to hit full kHz increments. All of these have been on multiple frequencies and cycled “up” in frequency. I mean they start at the lowest freq, pulse, move to the next highest, pulse again, etc, until reaching the highest freq, and then restarting at the lowest. They seem to use a pretty repeatable set of frequencies, and there is probably more than one source.
Several times I have also logged what I think of as “another” set of Pips. These do not end in full kHz increments, a set often ending in XXXX.1 or XXXX.5 for example. All of the frequencies in a given set seem to end in the same fraction, if one ends in .5 kHz they all do. These Pips cycle down, i.e. starting at the highest frequency, pulsing, and moving to the next frequency down. Most of these receptions have had pulse repetition times of more than the Pips that cycle down, up to 27 seconds, but with 15 seconds as the most common I have seen.
I have kind of lumped these Pips with the other above, even though the frequencies do not seem to be shared. Primarily because of the cycling freq to freq, even though one cycles up and the other cycles down.
In the past (8/28/2013) I have seen a 15 second spaced dasher similar to the one you mention on the frequencies of 4563.5, 5361.5, 6908.5, 7547.5, and 8051.5 kHz. These dashers were hitting each frequency, in sequence, working down in frequency, it was the “other” Pips. They ended before I could find any more frequencies (was working up at the time), so there may, or may not, have been other freqs in use. I say this was similar because while it was 15 seconds pulse to pulse like you said, the pulses were longer than you report, at 5.0 seconds.
Now, the freq of 8051.5 kHz is interesting. This is one of the frequencies that was used by the “Homer Simpson” station back in January of this year and June of last year. The Homer transmissions were also once each 15 seconds, and 5 seconds long, just like the pulses I had on 8/28. The Homer transmission were also on multiple frequencies and cycling down in frequency, highest to lowest, just like the pulses on 8/28.
Dunno, just some random facts that might, or might not, be somehow related. Nothing at all seems to really connect them, but the habits, propagation, and scarcity all kind of make me feel at a gut level like they may be connected to each other.
T!
Topic: Long Dasher 6950 2102 UTC 4 Sep 2013 (Read 1136 times)
