Time was when 500 Khz was a most important party line, calling and
distress freq for maritime mobile CW. It's been years since I've
listened there and heard active CW as I donated my lowfer RCVR to
Schoals Marine Lab sometime in the mid 70's. Recently got lowfer
capability again, my Sat800 (which has more digital artifacts on lowfer
than New Orleans has bedbugs) and a very recently purchased BC-348Q.
Morse CW in the western world is long gone, but I expected to hear
some third world vessels still using it. Nada. zip. null.
What I'm hearing is some strange signal which seems to have a
surpressed carrier on 500.0 and sidebands both above and below at about
6 khz intervals...ie +/-6, 12, 18, getting radidly weaker as they get
further from 500 khz. They are modulated A-2, MCW, with what seems to
be code with three characters...a dit, a short dah, and a long dah send
in the format {long dah, two dits, variable number of short dahs (n= 3
to ~20), long dah, pause} with timing like a busy signal on a landline
phone.

?? Any one else with a lowfer RCVR wanna take a listen and see if
they can hear it ?? I've been hearing it from 0000z to about 0300z.

?? anyone have any idea what this might be ??

wrote:


?? anyone have any idea what this might be ??


I bet someone in the LWCA knows. Try joining their message board:

http://lwca.org/mb/index.htm



------------------------------------------------------------
Nations are like leaves; they change color before they fall.
------------------------------------------------------------

Have you tried turning off various appliances around the house? I've heard
stuff like that from switching power supplies, cable modems, PC's, etc. I
have a signal that's all over the aircraft band here (not so strong as to
make me look for it yet) that sounds just like CW with nicely spaced
characters, but it's just gibberish. I'm sure one of these microprocessor
based thingies around me is doing it, just don't know which one.

BTW, if you're looking for something to do around 500khz, try NAVTEX at
518khz. I have logged stations well into Canada and down through the
Carribean from NC.

I've heard marine stuff on 2182khz before, but never the 500khz freq.

John



"William Mutch" wrote in message
ell.edu...
Time was when 500 Khz was a most important party line, calling and
distress freq for maritime mobile CW. It's been years since I've
listened there and heard active CW as I donated my lowfer RCVR to
Schoals Marine Lab sometime in the mid 70's. Recently got lowfer
capability again, my Sat800 (which has more digital artifacts on lowfer
than New Orleans has bedbugs) and a very recently purchased BC-348Q.
Morse CW in the western world is long gone, but I expected to hear
some third world vessels still using it. Nada. zip. null.
What I'm hearing is some strange signal which seems to have a
surpressed carrier on 500.0 and sidebands both above and below at about
6 khz intervals...ie +/-6, 12, 18, getting radidly weaker as they get
further from 500 khz. They are modulated A-2, MCW, with what seems to
be code with three characters...a dit, a short dah, and a long dah send
in the format {long dah, two dits, variable number of short dahs (n= 3
to ~20), long dah, pause} with timing like a busy signal on a landline
phone.

?? Any one else with a lowfer RCVR wanna take a listen and see if
they can hear it ?? I've been hearing it from 0000z to about 0300z.

?? anyone have any idea what this might be ??