running dogg wrote:

David Stinson wrote:

I guess the thing that really surprises me about Y.S.
is that (apparently) someone thought they could
carry on a long-term operation like this and escape being caught.
That's the biggest thing that lead me to believe this
might be an exercise of some kind by Uncle;
I didn't think anyone could be that foolish.
And what he was doing couldn't have been cheap;
it's not like an old CB and tape recorder could
have pulled this off.
Of course, I'm just speculating;
we'll have to wait for all the facts,
but I freely admit to being surprised by this turn.
Dave S.

Operating on the same frequencies as WWV and in a ham band were pretty
bold moves. Even if YS hadn't done those things, the prominence of the
signal (it was pretty strong on 3700-the freq in the ham band-in the
morning here in California) would have meant that hams all over the US
would be trying to track him down. Coordinating the signals like that
took some doing; I'm assuming that this isn't your garden variety Hard
Harry type pirate. All the signs pointed to it being a government
operation. I'm quite surprised that it has turned out to be a pirate.
There was quite a bit of time and I assume money invested by this person
in YS, why he did it nobody can say at this time. Remember KIPM, the
pirate who operated with a gazillion watts and never seemed to get
caught? Alan Maxwell put a lot of effort into his operation as well, but
at least he had something to say. YS just seems to have been done for
kicks.

Yeah, that's the thing. He screwed up by operating on 3700. Granted, the operations on
the WWV frequencies might generate a bit of interest, but there have been various
operators (the majority I assume to be outside the USA) operating on the WWV freqs over
the years.

The biggest mistake I can see with YS is that he operated on 3700 and then the ARRL
Intruder Watch got involved.

Myself and various other monitors resolved the location down to the desert SW of the
USA in December. I think, unbeknownst to us at the time, that the Intruder Watch in
conjunction with the FCC was already working on the situation.

I am proud of the fact that I was able to resolve the location down to the general area
at the time using simple antennas and communicating with various other monitors around
the USA.

My general feeling at the time was that it was in extreme Western Texas, Northern New
Mexico, or possibly Southern Colorado.

That was based upon other monitoring reports, and my own observations here of fade in
fade out times while observing the grey line.

It was fun.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it!

dxAce
Michigan
USA